


waiting for cars

by jadedpearl



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - No Pennywise (IT), Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Mild recreational drug use, Slice of Life, Slow Burn, Underage Drinking, fellas...is it gay to move across the country with your childhood friend?, pining.....because duh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-29
Updated: 2020-05-18
Packaged: 2021-02-27 07:48:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 34,732
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22023613
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jadedpearl/pseuds/jadedpearl
Summary: “Don’t worry about it,” Richie says, mid dip. Eddie snorts as Richie pulls him back up. If only it were so easy. “You’ll get a job, I’ll get two jobs. Maybe we can’t afford heat in the winter. It’ll be cute.”“Freezing to death is not cute,” Eddie says, a bit lost in the tangle of their fingers together.“I don’t know,” Richie sing songs, pulling Eddie close and taking advantage of his momentary reach for balance to pull one of his hands free and pinch Eddie’s cheek. “I think you’d pull it off. You’ll be the poster child for blue lips and cold feet.”“I knew I’d be the breadwinner,” Eddie mutters.....In July 1994, Eddie and Richie drive twelve hundred miles to live together in Chicago.
Relationships: Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Comments: 59
Kudos: 165





	1. Chapter 1

It’s a three bedroom over a diner. Moderately sized and clean, after Eddie’s done with it. There’s two living rooms–well, maybe it’s just one, with a wide doorway as the distinction between the first and second. Bay windows that Eddie already knows are going to be drafty as hell in January. Laughably small counter space in the kitchen.

Richie drops his duffle bag in the doorway and runs through the apartment when Eddie unlocks it for the first time, poking his head into every room and grinning wildly. He wasn’t with Eddie when he found the place, and the only idea he’d had of it was Eddie’s grumbling description, phoned over from a call box on the corner down the block. That, and a little diagram Eddie drew on a napkin one time. 

“It’s all of _your_ stuff in the moving van downstairs, asshole,” Eddie reminds Richie, before he gets too carried away. Eddie’s suitcases are at the foot of the stairs, not insignificant, but definitely made small by the minor avalanche that Richie’s bringing from his childhood bedroom. He finds himself wandering through the apartment to meet Richie, though, eyes tracking along the walls where they meet the ceiling. He hasn’t seen the place empty–it was a total shit show when he visited for the first time a few weeks ago, the previous tenants clearly less than concerned about hygiene and general cleanliness–so it’s interesting to see it so devoid of personal affects. After his mother’s knickknacks, invading every square inch of the house, up to and including the door of Eddie’s bedroom, the empty walls are a relieving respite. On the other hand, though, he’s curious about how they’re going to decorate–which of Richie’s posters are gonna make it out of his bedroom and into the living room–and which living room, one or two?

They meet back up by the door. “It’s good,” Richie says, grin huge. Eddie lets out a sigh of relief. Richie’d never seen the place, and Eddie’s spent the last three weeks in a whirlwind of anxiety–finding the apartment, visiting, submitting the application, and tasked with the decision of where he and Richie are going to live for the next year. The circumstances had been unavoidable–Richie had been hit with his sister’s wedding _and_ his grandmother’s funeral, and both out in California, leaving the apartment hunting to Eddie.

 _Thank god he likes it,_ Eddie thinks, hand firm on the bannister as Richie thunders down the steps in front of him. _Thank god he wants to stay._

It takes them most of the morning to unload their stuff–almost all of their furniture straight from the Tozier’s basement–and return the van, Eddie’s hands gripping the wheel at a nervous ten and two the whole way.

Eddie insists that they clean though the rest of the day and into the evening before he calls it around seven, and Richie orders a pizza. Richie has been surprisingly helpful, keeping up a steady stream of chatter and bouncing around topics until Eddie engaged; scrubbing or sweeping or dusting where Eddie told him to; even running out halfway through the day to buy garbage bags and bleach and rags, and coming back with all that and a family sized bag of M&Ms.

“How are we going to afford this?” Eddie says while they wait for the pizza to arrive, looking across the room and out the front windows, the neon sign from the diner weakly illuminating their living room. They’re only a week out from the summer solstice, the days still long, and it’s finally starting to quietly darken outside.

“Got it!” Richie says, from the other living room–the _den,_ they’ve decided to distinguish it as–and the Ramones start playing from the record player he’s been fiddling with ever since he got back from the pay phone. A little old for him–but all of his newer stuff is on cassette and CDs. He dances over to Eddie and grabs his both of his hands and inexplicably starts swing dancing, twirling Eddie and swooping around him. Richie likes to joke about having two left feet, but he’s not a terrible dancer, and he doesn’t seem to have any hangups about the incongruity of the style of dancing with the music.

“Don’t worry about it,” Richie says, mid dip. Eddie snorts as Richie pulls him back up. If only it were so easy. “You’ll get a job, I’ll get two jobs. Maybe we can’t afford heat in the winter. It’ll be cute.”

“Freezing to death is not cute,” Eddie says, a bit lost in the tangle of their fingers together.

“I don’t know,” Richie sing songs, pulling Eddie close and taking advantage of his momentary reach for balance to pull one of his hands free and pinch Eddie’s cheek. “I think you’d pull it off. You’ll be the poster child for blue lips and cold feet.”

“I knew I’d be the breadwinner,” Eddie mutters, content enough to play along with Richie’s bit for once. They’re still standing close. Richie drops his head to rest on Eddie’s shoulder. The crown of his hair tickles Eddie’s nose, his curls mussed from a long day.

“Duh,” Richie says, his breath ghosting over Eddie’s collarbone. He shivers despite himself, and then the doorbell rings.

They eat crosslegged in the front room, pizza grease soaking through their paper napkins. Eddie had firmly prioritized scrubbing what might have been mold out of the tub over unboxing their four plates (all mismatching, all Disney themed, all from Richie’s childhood) and they don’t even have a table yet, so they sit cross legged in the light of one of their lamps (the overhead light is burned out, but the ceiling fan still works.) In the morning, they’ll go to the dollar store and buy plates and lightbulbs. Goodwill, to look for a table. They’ll buy a phone for the hall, and then Eddie will drag Richie along with him to set it up. The day after that, he’ll look for a job.

Tonight he just lets himself laugh the way he always wants to around Richie; giddy with relief, of getting out, of being here. Chicago hums outside of their window. The bar across the street is starting to warm up, old regulars just getting in. Richie cycles through his repertoire of all of his Muppets impersonations–one of the only things Sonia had on VHS, the show Eddie grew up with before meeting Richie and his 24/7 unlimited cable and long stretches of time without parent supervision. He can do them all–Big Bird, Oscar, Gonzo, Bert–but it’s Kermit that makes Eddie laugh the hardest.

Their rooms share a wall. On the other side of the apartment, past the bathroom, there’s a third–but that roommate isn’t arriving until the end of August. For the next two months, it’s just them. Eddie doesn’t have a bed frame because he’d snuck his mattress out at four this morning. It was the only thing he took with him that was bigger than a suitcase, and going back for the bed frame felt like a certain kind of hubris. Richie had made a whole show of tiptoeing towards Sonia’s room; Eddie had caught him by the crook of his elbow and yanked him back towards the door.

Richie doesn’t have a bed frame because he would have had to take it apart to get it down the stairs, and Eddie hadn’t been there to help. His parents bought him a new mattress, but for now it’s on the floor, same as Eddie’s.

Eddie’d set his up while Richie was carrying up the last of his boxes. It’s an old set of sheets–pale yellow, tiny blue flowers dotting across the edges. They’re soft and they still smell like his mother’s house, but they’re all he has tonight. He’d snuck them out with the mattress, taking them from the linen closet like some kind of practical cat burglar. He tacks a new line to his mental to do list, already a mile long, to buy a second set for laundry days.

“Can I sleep in here?” Richie asks, already flopped on the bed, his mismatched socked feet hanging off the end. He’s got his glasses off, folded next to him and everything.

“Don’t be lazy,” Eddie huffs, dragging a quilt out of one of the few boxes he has. He nudges Richie with his foot, but he doesn’t respond. Eddie imagines snapping the quilt out, letting it float down to cover Richie, and then turning the lights out and crawling under himself. He clears his throat instead. “Come on, I’ll help you with your fitted sheets.”

“Lucky me,” Richie says, shoving his glasses back on his face and rolling up and off the bed. “What would I do without you, oh husband of mine?” He bats his eyelashes.

“Ha ha ha,” Eddie deadpans, leaving the quilt folded on the edge of his bed and trailing after Richie to his room. It looks like a tornado has come through, the sure sign of the Richie-Tozier-patented-unpacking-technique at work: opening a box, getting distracted by something in it, messing around with it for ten minutes–and then moving on to unpack something else, contents of the first forgotten. There are at least ten boxes in the room, and all of them are opened, their insides half spilled out.

Eddie picks across the floor as Richie rummages around for the new pack of sheets he’d bought last week. Eddie holds down the corners as they struggle with the fitted sheet, and snaps at Richie to hold the edge of the top sheet straight, tucking it in tightly, hospital corners and everything. As soon as Richie’s comforter is on, he flops dramatically, face first and arms spread. Eddie briefly imagines an alternate version of what he’d pictured in his own room; prodding Richie until he moves over to one side, and then laying down next to him, bodies curled together.

“Goodnight,” he says instead, poking the back of Richie’s jean clad calf. Richie kicks his foot once, and then he’s rolling to sit up again. Eddie barely has time to register what’s happening before Richie’s arms are around his midsection, his head pressed to Eddie’s sternum. Eddie’s looking down at the top of his head for the second time this night, and there’s only a split second of hesitation before he wraps his arms around Richie’s shoulders right back.

“Thanks.” Richie’s voice is muffled against Eddie’s t shirt. “For moving here with me.”

Eddie squeezes him tighter. “I should be thanking you,” he murmurs. “You…” he trails off, unable to really put the magnitude of it into words.

Richie shakes his head, his nose rubbing against Eddie’s stomach, back and forth, and then he pulls away. “Yeah, I guess I did have to give a lot up, what with your mom being oh, twelve hundred miles away now. I think I’m gonna some serious frequent flier miles–you know they’re gonna love me down at the travel agency.”

Eddie rolls his eyes and shoves at Richie’s shoulder. “Yeah, goodnight, _Dick_.”

Richie groans at the nickname. “Night night, _Edward_. See you tomorrow.”

Eddie can’t help the little thrill at that. Not the Edward part–the seeing-Richie-in-the-morning-part. _Every_ morning. “See you tomorrow,” he says back.

In his bed, on his back, staring up at his ceiling fan, Eddie twists his hands together absentmindedly and thinks back to the past few days. On Monday they’d driven down to Bangor and rented the van–Richie driving his car back, the one he had lined up to sell the next day, riding too close behind Eddie the whole way, except when he cut across lanes to sit in the lane next to the van at traffic stops. They’d packed up almost everything that day. Tuesday, after stopping for Eddie’s things, they’d left earlier than they told Sonia they would, just to avoid her where they could. Fourteen hours to Cleveland, spending the night in a cheap motel, two different beds, the moving van visible from their room. And then waking up at four to make it to Chicago in time to pick up the keys to the apartment. Stopping at a Dunkin’ Donuts when they got to the city, Richie dashing back to the truck with a box of donuts tucked under his arm, and two large coffees, no protective sleeves to protect his hands.

And now–Eddie in his bed, a thousand miles and a time zone away from his mother, ceiling fan with an annoying click every time the blades go around above his head. Richie in the next room, passed out. Eddie tries to bite back a smile, but it spreads across his face anyway, slow and wide. He rolls onto his side, clutches his extra pillow to his chest in a facsimile of the hugs Richie’d given him tonight–the almost one in the living room–den–whatever–and the real one he’d gotten in the bedroom. And as he falls asleep, he’s still thinking about them. Richie isn’t the best hugger–he’s too skinny for it to be a completely comfortable experience, and he’s all sharp elbows and ribs–but he’s still comforting and familiar in the way he’s been since they were eleven. The pillow _physically_ feels better to hold, but Eddie knows what he’d prefer any day. The ceiling fan wheezes away above him, and he drifts off knowing that he might be safe for the first time in nineteen years.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's so many reddie fics in NY or LA (which I love) but my little midwestern-transplant heart is still stuck on Richie living in Chicago (according to Mike's list in Chapter 2) so....this. Plus, I needed something to project my own Chicago undergrad experience onto. 
> 
> If you've ever been to a three bedroom apartment in Chicago, you probably know exactly what Eddie and Richie's place looks like, because they're all the same. I'm doing my best to keep it period accurate but at the end of the day I'm making some assumptions about what renting was like in the 90s, for the sake of my own sanity. 
> 
> I'm writing this as a fun side project to take a breather from the much heavier, probably longer reddie fic I'm writing, so I don't have an overarching plan just yet. Tags will be updated if needed.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Enter bev!

It’s Eddie’s day off, and Richie’s rummaging around in the fridge like they have anything in there besides bread and a half empty jar of salsa.

It’s been two weeks since they moved in, and the apartment is starting to look more like someone lives there, instead of a squatters den. Sure–they have nothing in the entry room besides Richie’s guitar, beat up and on its side in the corner. But Eddie found a cheap table at a Salvation Army last week, and some chairs had followed soon after. It’s where he’s seated now, in the kitchen and eating a late lunch.

“We have nothing to eat in the house,” Richie complains. He had breezed past Eddie without a glance spared a few minutes ago, in search of food. He straightens from his crouch in front of the fridge now to turn towards Eddie. “Wait, what are you eating?”

Eddie just blinks up at him. The scene is admittedly incriminating: the empty milk carton, to one side. The empty box of cheerios, to the other. The cereal bowl, in front of him.

“Oh, I see,” Richie says, shaking his head with a wry smile on his face. He steps closer slowly, hands on his hips like a disappointed dad. Not that Eddie would know much about those. “The only food in the house, and you just–gobble it down. Like a fucking gremlin–wait, abort lecture–how have I not made that comparison before?” He drags their other chair out –mismatched, from the alley – and plops down next to Eddie.

Eddie moves his cereal bowl a little to the right and puts his spoon down. “You _have_ made that comparison, asshole. _More than once._ And every time I have to remind you that I’m not a fucking gremlin.”

“Not from where I’m sitting.” Richie sighs dreamily and rests his chin in his palms, the motion practiced because he’s been doing it since they were kids. Eddie so does not find it cute. “A looker like you–with the voracious appetite–it all checks out, comes back clean, the works.”

“Okay, you’re either insulting me, or you’re really fucking confused about what gremlins look like. They’re not cute.”

“I didn’t say they were _cute_ , I said _you_ were a _looker_ ,” Richie says, like it all makes sense, standing back up to rummage around in their dry storage. It’s a bit better stocked, and he emerges triumphant with a jar of peanut butter. “And I know what gremlins look like. Obviously.” He settles back down and goes about making a peanut butter sandwich.

“Want me to cut the crusts off?” Eddie simpers. 

“No thanks. I only like it when your mom does it.” Richie pokes his tongue out to spread peanut butter on a slice of bread. It’s ridiculous.

“Richard gets off a good one,” Eddie mutters, and picks his spoon back up. Richie’s wearing his work uniform: white button down, black tie, slacks. His shirt is open over his t shirt though, his tie undone. It’s still weird to see him in such neutral colors. When Richie had told Eddie that he wanted to try working in a restaurant, Eddie had quietly imagined him at the diner down below. Or maybe the one the train stop away, known for being open 24 hours a day (good) and their loaded nachos (not so good). Somewhere he could crack jokes and flirt for tips and not get fired.

But he somehow got a job at a nice place. Well, a nic _er_ place. A place with cloth napkins. Eddie has no idea how it happened, only that he’d forced Richie to wear his one nice shirt to the interview, and now he works most weekday nights. Every Sunday morning he’s out the door and wiping down tables while Eddie’s still in bed.

“Wanna go to the movies, after I get off work?” Richie asks, buttoning his shirt up and tucking it in. He struggles a bit with the back, elbows making wings as he finally gets it in all smooth.

“Sure.” Eddie pokes his spoon into his cheerios. They’re starting to get soggy. “I’ll come pick you up.”

“I’ll call you when I’m out.” Richie isn’t closing tonight, so he doesn’t know exactly when he’s getting off until they cut him. “Ashley’s managing, so who the fuck knows.”

Eddie furrows his eyebrows in the general direction of his cereal. _Ashley._ He hears a lot about her. But then there’s also Jana and Mark and Nate. “You have peanut butter on your face, brush your teeth.”

“Yes _mom_ ,” Richie says, and winks.

Eddie groans. “ _Please_ don’t make that thing. _Please_ don’t make your weird mom thing even weirder, you sick fuck.”

“No promises!” Richie blows a kiss, which Eddie pretends to dodge. He laughs, dashes around the house momentarily, and emerges from his bedroom with his keys. “See you tonight!” he calls, and then he’s gone.

It’s always a little lonely for the first ten minutes. The apartment is so quiet in the moments right after Richie’s left. Eddie wonders if its the same for Richie when he goes to his job at the co-op. Its probably different, though. Eddie isn’t really friends with anyone at the grocery store yet. As far as he can tell, Richie’s charmed everyone he’s ever met. As long as they’ve got half a sense of humor and a forgiving nature, he’s golden.

He lets himself mope for those ten minutes, flat on his back, hands folded over his stomach, legs slung over the back of the couch, staring at the ceiling. And then he gets up and does all the things he likes to do when the apartment is empty. Scrubs the bathroom sink. Scrounges up some quarters and does a load of laundry. Stands in front of their open fridge and makes a mental list of all the things they’ll need from Aldi. (Like, _everything._ )

Sitting on the edge of his mattress (no desk, yet) Eddie stares the papers in front of him and tries to think about the next three months. He’s got his course catalogue in front of him, fingers skimming all of his class options for the fall. He’s already all set for classes–he signed up during orientation, the same week he visited the apartment for the first time. He’d read the guide beforehand, stood in those long lines to register, but it still doesn’t feel real. Like any minute now, his mom’s going to poke her head in the door and ask how he is. If he’s cold. If he’s taken his medicine today.

He ends up bringing the catalogue out into the hallway to call Bev. He pictures her, still in Portland for the time being, picking up the phone. Their hallway has one of those alcoves for phones, and Eddie sinks to the floor underneath it as the phone rings and rings.

Bev finally picks up. “Hey, baby.”

“It’s me. Eddie.” Maybe the alcove is actually for phone books, not phones. Or candles. Or small shrines, plastered with cut out clippings from newspapers and strung with red string.

“Duh. You’re my one and only.” He can hear the grin in her voice.

“Ha.” Eddie smiles into the receiver. He misses her–but that’s nothing new. “Do you think Intro to Literature is going to be any good?”

Bev snorts into the phone. “No. You’re going to be way smarter than everyone in the room.”

“That’s encouraging,” Eddie says, tracing the class with his finger. All of the one’s he’d signed up for are carefully underlined.

“I still can’t believe your mom wouldn’t let you just take the AP tests.”

“It was hard enough to get her to let me even take the classes at all.” Eddie slides further down the wall. The phone on the shelf above him is pulled a little closer to the edge. “She didn’t want me to get any ideas, about you know. Leaving.” He’s explained it a million times, but he still appreciates his friends acting like it’s still as fucked up as they did the first time he told them about it. Makes it feel less normal. “Not that it worked, I guess.”

“Of course it didn’t.” Bev sounds proud. “You doing ok?

Eddie curls his finger around the coiled phone cord and pictures her doing the same, chipped glitter nail polish and all. “Yeah,” he says after a pause. “Richie’s at work.”

Bev mercifully doesn’t say anything about the implications of _that_ , just hums. “I guess you two haven’t killed each other yet, huh?”

“Just give me a week. Hey, Bev?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you just…pretend I’m back in Maine, for a minute?”

“Is everything okay in Chicago?” She sounds worried.

“No, yeah,” Eddie rushes to assure her. “I just…miss you guys.”

Bev hums. “Okay, sure. But not Derry. Lets pretend you’re _here_ right now. Wanna go shopping with me? Thrift Town is half off on yellow tags today.”

“I don’t know, I’m pretty good on clothes…” Eddie pretends to hedge before giving in. “Oh, okay. You know I can’t resist a shopping trip with _you_ , Beverly Marsh.”

“Hey! I found you that coat, remember?”

Eddie does remember. It’s wool. “Okay. I’ll see you there.”

“See you there, Eddie,” she says, and they both hang up.

Richie calls around nine to let Eddie know that he’s closing his tables out. Eddie takes five minutes to grab his jacket and keys and triple check that all the doors and windows are locked. Then he walks to the train station, takes it one stop over, and walks another two blocks until he’s standing across the street from Richie’s work.

Eddie can see Richie through the front window of the restaurant, collecting his tips and some exaggerated air kisses from a coworker. Eddie curls his hands into fists in his jacket pockets, because the way Richie makes him feel is overwhelming sometimes. Like his chest is too tight. Like his shoes are too small. Like he’s huge, towering above the city. Like he’s tiny, falling into the cracks in the sidewalk.

Richie catches his eye through the window, and then he’s grinning, taking a step towards the door, before suddenly dashing back towards the back. He emerges a minute later with his jacket in one hand, a plastic bag in the other, both arms raised like he’s won something.

“ _Eduardo_ , _mi_ _amor_!” He calls, and Eddie’s pretty sure that half of the restaurant can still hear him through the door, slowly swinging shut. His arms land on Eddie’s shoulders as he pulls him into a slightly awkward sideways hug. It’s all elbows and bony ribs and Eddie wishes he wanted Richie to let go, but he doesn’t. Not really. 

It’s moments like these that Eddie knows for sure that Richie’s straight. Eddie wouldn’t just hug his male friend in the street. Chicago isn’t Derry, but they still don’t know it that well. They don’t know who’s gonna see, if someone in the restaurant isn’t going to like it, if Richie’s going to lose his job.

Eddie wiggles out from under Richie’s weight and catches his wrist to drag him down the street and towards the bus stop. Richie follows easily, loose and tired from work. Eddie drops his wrist after a few seconds, and Richie lopes up to fall into step next to him, passing the plastic bag between his hands to shrug into his jacket.

“I got us food,” he says after a moment of silence, lifting the bag. Eddie knows; he could smell the food when Richie’d draped himself over him. “Thought we could eat it on the bus. When does the movie start?”

“9:50,” Eddie says, spying the bus station up ahead and hoping it comes soon. They’ve got half an hour to make it–it’s a ten minute ride there, but something happens after dark and the busses suddenly start running on a strange time table that includes hour long delays.

But it does come on time, and Richie sits heavily in a bus seat towards the back after they clamor on, legs sprawling. They’re tucked against the window, to-go box held low in Richie’s lap, just in case the bus driver catches a glance in the mirror and is feeling vindictive. Eddie likes these little thrills, tiny ways of pushing back. Acting out. “You brought two forks?”

Richie nods, their heads bent close together. His curls brush against Eddie’s ear. He passes a plastic fork to Eddie, warm from the box, a napkin carefully wrapped around it. Eddie wonders if Richie was the one who did that.

The pasta is some kind of alfredo, cheesy and warm, and they fight over the last bite, right as the bus is pulling up to their stop. Eddie shoves the box back into the plastic bag as Richie gives the bus driver a cheery wave .

“One more year, and we can have bus wine with our bus pasta,” Richie sighs happily, swinging his arms as they walk up to the ticket booth outside of the theatre.

“Yeah, too bad it’s that pesky little thing called–what was that? Public intoxication? Which last I checked–yep, look at that, still illegal.” Richie laughs. “And _please_ don’t say bus pasta. I’m trying not to think about it.”

“I love when you get messy with me,” Richie croons. Eddie rolls his eyes and flashes a strained smile to the cashier and buys two tickets for _Wolf._

Inside the movie theatre, Richie leans across the seat to rest his head on Eddie’s shoulder, and Eddie grips his armrests and tries not to think about it.

He’s liked Richie for a long time–a really long time, now. So long that he’ll probably be okay to just keep on liking him like this, alone and up close, but not touching. Most of the time he is fine. The main problem is that Richie doesn’t know the rules Eddie’s set for himself, so it’s only natural that he breaks the ‘no touching’ one. A lot.

It’s not hard, all the time–but then again, that doesn’t make it easy. Especially not when Richie falls asleep thirty minutes into the movie. Up on screen, Jack Nicholson and Michelle Pfeiffer stare into each other’s eyes, tangled up in bedsheets.

The movie isn’t great. Richie would definitely love it. Eddie wants to focus on Richie’s breath, warm on his neck, but he forces himself to pay attention to the screen so that he can Richie give a blow by blow in the morning–the only way he’ll for sure avoid getting dragged along to see it again. On his shoulder, Richie’s lost in what Eddie assumes is the easy sleep of the exhausted, his mouth hanging open slightly. Eddie distantly hopes he doesn’t drool all over his jacket.

“Shit,” Richie says when Eddie jostles him awake. The credits are rolling. He smacks his lips a few times and stretches, his arm coming down to land around Eddie’s shoulder. Eddie roughly shakes him off.

“Sorry for falling asleep,” Richie says as they walk out of the theater, cracking his knuckles loudly. Eddie winces. Richie’s definitely going to ask him to pop his back when they get home (a process that requires Richie facedown on the scratched up hardwood and Eddie standing on his back). “I’m a pretty lousy date, huh, Eds?”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Yeah, some date. I bought you a ticket and you didn’t even watch it. You basically just got paid to take a nap.”

“I bought the food!” Richie exclaims, voice pitched high. “You’ll tell me what happened though, right?”

Eddie does, the whole bus ride home. He’s relieved when Richie keeps a comfortable inch between them. He laughs loudly when Eddie tells him about Jack Nicholson pissing all over the bathroom floor, and an old lady turns around to glare at them.

Most of time it’s been easy, just like this, living with Richie even though Eddie is at least a little in love with him. But then sometimes, Eddie just wants to slide his finger along the back of Richie’s collar and curl his fingers in the hair at the nape of his neck. Let him stay when he comes into Eddie’s bedroom in the morning to jump on the mattress and wake him up, instead of chasing him away with a pillow.

But all of that would be crossing a line that shouldn’t even be there in the first place. It took Eddie a while to figure out that how Richie made him feel was different than it should. It didn’t take long for him to know that he should never, ever tell him. So he keeps that inch between them instead, and the lights of their neighborhood wink out one by one as midnight approaches, Chicago sliding away through the windows of the bus.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The movie they see is Wolf, starring Jack Nicholson. It's about a guy who turns into a werewolf (shocker) and I haven't seen it but based on the trailer alone it looks uh, pretty bad. But it came out around early summer in 1994 and you know Richie would be all over it. 
> 
> Happy new year everyone!


	3. Chapter 3

“If you keep following me around at work, they’re going to kick you out,” Eddie says, eyes firmly trained on the jars he’s restocking.

“I’m not following you,” Richie says. “I’m shopping. For, uh,” he grabs a jar off the shelf at random and reads the label. “Baby food?”

“Uh huh.” Eddie finishes putting the last jar of Gerber baby food on the shelf. He stoops to pick up his basket and continues down the aisle. When Richie had shown up at Green’s Co-Op ten minutes ago, Eddie had done everything short of locking the doors to dissuade him from coming in. Unfortunately for Eddie–or fortunately for Richie, depending on how you looked at it–his managers are present and undistracted. The easiest thing was to just let Richie in and pretend as best he could that he didn’t know him.

Richie trails after him, still holding on to the baby food. “You’re not buying that,” Eddie says when he rounds the corner into the next aisle and sees it in Richie’s hand.

“Nah. Carrot–blech.” He sticks his tongue out. “I could fuck up a jar of apple prune, though. Hey, Spaghetti, did you know that Humphrey Bogart is the Gerber baby? Like that’s him, on the jar. But a baby.”

“Yes,” Eddie says. He didn’t, but he’s not going to tell Richie that. “Are you going to keep this up? I could get fired, and then you’d have to actually, I don’t know, do dishes or something, when I can’t pay rent anymore and they kick me out on the street.”

“Who’s kicking you out? They’d have to toss me out with you, we can live in a cardboard box, make soup in a shoe…”

Eddie gags. “That’s disgusting. How are we supposed to keep warm in your little Dickens fantasy, exactly?”

“My dick is _anything_ but–okay, okay, I’ll stop. How’s this?” Richie pretends to swoon. “You’re so…literate.” He starts to fall backwards, hand on his forehead. Eddie reaches for him, but Richie catches himself on the last minute instead. He ends up leaning into Eddie’s space as he overcorrects. “And I can think of more than a few ways to get hot.”

Eddie bats him away. “Okay, asshole, but I don’t _want_ to live in a refrigerator box with you.”

Something passes across Richie’s face, but it’s too quick for Eddie to really catch what it was. Eddie searches his face for a second, but Richie’s already thrown up a lazy grin over his features. “You shouldn’t sweat it, Eds. I buy weed from your boss, he’s not gonna fire you for talking to me.”

“Don’t call me that–and for the _last time_ , Joey isn’t my boss _._ Todd is, and he’s from Indiana.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? If I was from Indiana I’d _definitely_ be a total pot head. Plus, he works at the co-op, same as you.”

“You’re so full of shit. Just because a guy has a ponytail–“ Joey has the long hair actually, but Eddie’s mixing them up in the heat of the moment. He doesn’t intend for Richie to interact with either of them, anyway.

“ _Everyone_ here smokes–except you, obviously,” Richie placates, at the look Eddie levels him.

Richie might have a point. But. “I know you don’t even buy weed,” Eddie says, straightening a can so he can at least pretend to be working. “You just bum off everyone else at parties.”

“I don’t buy weed, _yet._ ” Richie bounces on the balls of his feet. He’s still holding the jar of baby food. “I’m thinking of branching out, you know.”

“Whatever,” Eddie says, just to be out of this conversation. “As long as you keep it on the back porch, I don’t give a shit.”

“I always keep it on the back porch.” Richie waggles his eyebrows–although he can’t actually move them independently of each other. The effect is more along the lines of facial contortion. Eddie gets the picture. “It’s the exhibitionist streak in me.”

“Can’t wait ’til it’s November and your balls freeze and fall off,” Eddie mumbles, just loud enough for Richie to hear. Richie’s delighted–as always. Eddie pretends that this wasn’t the intended effect all along–as always.

Richie’s opened his mouth to respond, undoubtedly with a lengthy diatribe about his balls, when Todd mercifully calls Eddie’s name from one of the front registers.

Eddie shoots Richie a look and dutifully makes his way to the front of the store. He’s technically cashiering right now, but it’s the middle of the day and slow, so he’s been restocking and checking expiration dates around the store.

Joey – Eddie’s not-boss – and Todd are at the same register, going over the printed out order for their next shipment of produce. Nick Drake is playing gently over the store speakers, all soothing and seventies. Eddie likes it.

“You finish restocking?” Todd asks mildly, seemingly oblivious to Richie’s–well, everything. Todd’s a pleasant looking middle aged guy who seems to appreciate Eddie’s business-like way of going about things.

“Yeah,” Eddie says. “Do you want me to sweep?”

“No, that’s–“ Todd’s eyes light on something behind Eddie. “Oh, why don’t you check out this young man?”

Eddie turns to see Richie, holding up a bag of sliced sandwich bread and grinning. He’s is clearly thrilled at being called “young man”. Eddie’s wondering how the hell Todd hadn’t heard them bickering twenty feet away a minute ago.

“Sure,” he mutters, sliding behind the other register and scanning the bread. Maybe Richie will just leave, if he does this quickly.

“You checkin’ me out?” Richie whispers loudly, leaning across the conveyor belt. Eddie blanks for a panicked second before he remembers what Todd had said. _For now, I must know how fine you are, in your way_ , croons Nick Drake, lyrics clear in the quiet of the grocery store. Eddie shoves Richie away by the shoulder.

“Yes, in an entirely professional and work-appropriate way,” he says. He holds his hand out for Richie to give him cash or something. Richie just plunks the jar of baby food onto the belt. “I thought you _weren’t_ going to buy this.” Eddie scans it anyway. When Richie’s set his mind to something, there really isn’t any use in trying to dissuade him. Especially when it’s dumb little stuff that won’t hurt anyone. Probably.

“Thought it could be a little souvenir,” Richie says, digging into his pocket. Eddie’s worried for a second that he’s going to pay all in quarters, or something, but Richie pulls out a crumpled ten dollar bill instead. Eddie swipes it out of his hand.

Eddie opens his mouth to say, _A souvenir for what?_ When Joey appears at his elbow. “You two know each other?”

Eddie sighs as the cash register pops open with a ding. Joey’s generally well meaning. He’s also got a patchy beard and curly, unbrushed hair that he keeps in a loose ponytail. Now that he’s officially talking to Richie, Eddie will never hear the end of it at home.

“Yes siree,” Richie says, standing up straight and visibly excited. He’s never actually met Joey, just sees him though the window sometimes when he insists on walking with Eddie to work. Eddie scowls into the drawer and counts out Richie’s change. He’s resolved to keep his mouth shut to limit how embarrassing this is going to be for him. All he can do is pray that this doesn’t turn into a total dumpster fire, but he’s not exactly hopeful.

“Edward and I have known each other since we were thiiiiiiiis little,” Richie continues, gesturing at a height that’s about 8 inches tall. He has to crouch to do it. “Puppy love since we were in the womb.”

Edward is somehow worse than Eds. “Neither of those are even close to true,” Eddie says flatly, losing his will to remain silent almost immediately, . “Joey, this is my roommate. Richie.” _He’s a terror,_ he resists adding.

“Tight,” Joey says, and shakes Richie’s offered hand. Richie’s grin grows wider. “You move here with Eddie?”

“Spent twenty odd hours in the car with him and everything,” Richie says, ignoring Eddie trying to give him his change back. “Taught him to drive, and everything, and what does he say? _You drive too fast, Richie, You’re reckless, Richie, I’m gonna kill you, Richie._ ”

Eddie drops Richie’s change so that it bounces to the floor. “Oops,” he says. He’s managed to stay pretty calm, all things considered.

“You just like me on my knees,” Richie says cheerfully and way too loud, stooping down to chase a quarter.

“Oh, my god, shut up.” Eddie drags a hand down his face. “This is why I never let you come here.”

“I knew it!” Richie’s head pops back up. “I knew you didn’t want me here!”

“Yeah, cause I told you so! A million times! And you did it anyway!”

Joey clears his throat, and Eddie immediately snaps his mouth shut. His face is burning, but Joey looks amused instead of angry. Richie tends to have that effect on people. “Eddie, when you’re done with uh–this– we’d love to go over tomorrow’s shipment with you.”

“Yes. Thank you.” He’s so lucky he hasn’t lost his job. Yet. If Eddie were Joey he’d totally fire him. He wants to fire himself, kind of.

Richie watches Eddie mechanically bag his meager groceries with an amused expression on his face. He’s either completely unaware of Eddie’s suffering, or–more likely–he just thinks it’s funny.

“He’s cute,” he says, after Joey’s wandered back to the other register.

Eddie can’t even work himself up about whatever the fuck that means. Whatever Richie’s implicating, or not implicating. Or if he’s just fucking around. “Ponytails just do it for you, huh?” He shoves the bag at Richie.

“Uh huh. Easier to find something to grab on to. You know.”

“Okay, out.”

Richie leaves the way he came in–waving at Eddie and tripping over the uneven tile by the door. Eddie watches him leaves with his arms crossed. They have bread at home, which means that Richie walked four blocks specifically to bother Eddie and buy a jar of baby food. He’s so annoying.

Joey only brings up Richie one time as Eddie’s clocking out. He only says, “Richies’s–“ before Eddie cuts him off.

“A total terror, I know.” He aggressively punches his clock out card. “I’m sorry he came by.”

“He’s not so bad,” Joey muses. “Just…”

“Bad for business?” Eddie says. “Yeah, the only reason I didn’t actually lock the doors on him was because no one else was in here.” He pauses. “I can make sure he doesn’t come back.”

Joey laughs. “Oh, no. It’s fine having weirdos around. It helps with the vibe. Have you two known each other a long time?”

“Since grade school. And I’m still not rid of him,” Eddie says, but he offers a slight smile to show that he’s joking. That Richie really isn’t that bad at all.

“That’s sweet.” Joey pats Eddie’s shoulder.

“Uh–yeah, I guess.”

He thinks about it all the way home. Are they sweet? He’s always been aware that their dynamic is at its loudest when there’s an audience. Or when Richie’s trying to cheer him up. But people don’t usually find it endearing.

He catches sight of himself in a store window while he’s waiting to cross the street. Light glints off of his sunglasses. One of the legs of his shorts is riding up slightly. He pulls it back down.

“You are so lucky everyone at my work is a stoner hippy weirdo,” Eddie says as soon as he opens the door to their apartment. Richie’s in the living room, which is good. Otherwise, Eddie would have had to track him down just to repeat himself.

He’s laying on the couch, legs slung over the armrest. When Eddie comes in, he leverages himself up his elbow, pushing his the headphones off. Eddie’s interruption doesn’t throw him off, or stop him from immediately talking. “Lucky because Todd’s looking for an au-pair, only he doesn’t actually have kids, he just wants to pay me to languish in his wood-paneled Indiana home with my shirt off? Because you’re gonna have to tell him I’m taken.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “I mean you’re lucky because I’m not going to strangle you because I was fired. Which–I wasn’t, sit back down–would have been all your fault.” He kicks his shoes off and walks over to sit on the couch. Richie scoots up against the armrest and curls his legs to make room for Eddie. “Also, one, _as if_ anyone would hire you as their–their, _boy toy,_ and two, don’t act like you’re better than leaving the restaurant to just lay around half dressed.”

Richie grins, leans forward across his bent legs to scratch Eddie’s head. “I didn’t mean waiting tables, I mean I’m taken by you. Duh.”

“Ha ha.” Eddie lets Richie continue to scratch his hair for a second longer he maybe should, and then he pushes his hand away. “If anyone wanted you to take your shirt off, it would just be so they wouldn’t have to look at it anymore.”

Richie looks down at his chest. He’s wearing a button down with red and green peppers. They have legs and arms, but no eyes. They’re…dancing? Maybe? Eddie thinks some of them have cowboy hats. Under that, an old Speed Racer shirt, faded and 70s. “Fair enough,” he says cheerfully, and then rolls off the couch. Eddie drops his head back against the couch as Richie leaves the room.

“Oh hey,” Richie calls from the kitchen, and then the sound of the faucet cutting on drowns out the rest of what he’s saying.

“I can’t hear you,” Eddie says loudly. The water cuts off. Richie saunters back down the hall, dish towel in hand.

“I was asking, when do your classes start?”

Eddie looks up at the ceiling. “August 17th.” The date is ready on the tip of his tongue. He’s been saying it like a mantra ever since he was accepted, all the way back in March. “It’s a Wednesday.”

“That’s weird.” Richie perches back on the armrest. “We still have to do like, a million things before you get sucked in.”

Eddie lolls his head to look at Richie and furrows his brows. “I’m not going to get sucked in.”

“You’re gonna forget allllll about me,” Richie says, leaning forward to pinch Eddie’s cheek. “You’re gonna get a girlfriend, and poor Richie is going to be left all alone with Chaz.” Chaz being their mysterious and elusive third roommate. Only Richie’s spoken on the phone with him before. He’s from California. Eddie always pictures him with a surfboard in hand. “Maybe we’ll fall in love.”

“That’s–not my plan, at all, you weirdo.” His chest feels suddenly tight, and he almost wants his inhaler. Every once in a while Eddie gets a little reminder that Richie knows him better than anyone else in the world, and at the same time it’s like he doesn’t know him at all.

“I bet he’s smokin’ hot,” Richie says. “Eight pack and everything.”

“I’m gonna lay down,” Eddie says, standing up. The sudden change in elevation makes his head rush. First Joey, now Chaz. “I’m tired. Is that a dish towel? Were you washing dishes? Go back to doing that.”

If Richie notices the rock in Eddie’s stomach, he doesn’t let on. “Why’d we choose a place without a dishwasher, anyway?”

“You were happy enough about it when I found it,” Eddie snaps. He immediately feels stupid and sighs. “I’m sorry, I just–I’m gonna lay down.”

“I’m just kidding, Eds,” Richie says, and now he’s concerned. Eyes all big, eyebrows pushed up.

“I know,” Eddie says. “You shouldn’t, though.”

“I know, I know. I’m glad you found the place, you have no idea–“

“No,” Eddie interrupts. “I mean, about Joey. And Chaz. You’re not–you just shouldn’t.”

Richie closes his mouth slowly. “Okay,” he finally says. “I won’t.”

And Eddie believes him. Most things are a bruise Richie can’t stop poking, but when they get serious, he keeps his word.

Eddie’s been lying his whole life, and he wishes he could be like that too. He makes promises and has to break them, he tells stories so easily that they’re easier than just saying the truth. So he can’t even explain to Richie why he’s upset. And even if he could, Richie probably wouldn’t understand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one took a little longer to get out because my life has resumed after break. I think I'll try to make a week/week and a half between updates?
> 
> I promise they will do actual Chicago things after this chapter. I just thought it would be weird if I didn't address Eddie's job. Also, I've officially added the slice of life tag, lol. We might be meandering towards a plot....very slowly....
> 
> A couple of notes:  
> -Humphrey Bogart is not the Gerber baby. At the time I wrote that line I thought he was, but after learning that he wasn't I kept it in anyway because it seems like the kind of fun fact Richie would be enamored with, whether or not it's true.  
> -The song playing on the radio at the co-op is Fly by Nick Drake. It's a sweet song.  
> -This isn't really a fact but I arbitrarily assigned August 17th 1994 to be a Wednesday, and when I looked it up, it actually was. Go me. 
> 
> Let me know what you think!


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally! A Chicago activity! It only took me four chapters to deliver!

When Eddie wakes up, light is already streaming in through his window. He squints at the brick wall that his window faces, and then rolls over. His alarm clock reads that it’s almost half past nine. He’s surprised he even slept this late–he’d gone to bed early last night after a half hearted attempt to read.

He can hear movement somewhere on the closer side of the apartment. After a moment’s debate, he rolls off his mattress and pulls on a t shirt over his boxers. The box AC is in the living room window, and it doesn’t reach Eddie’s room all the way down the hall. He has to sleep almost naked, most nights.

Eddie finds Richie in the kitchen, a carton of eggs open on the counter next to him. He’s poking into the pan in front of him with a spatula, expression intent. Eddie watches him for a second, the way he lets himself when he really can’t help it and the risk of getting caught is low. He likes Richie all the time, but Richie in the morning is special. His hair is messy–like it always is. He’s wearing a dumb t-shirt–like he always is. But there’s still something softer about him, a little more subdued. And the boxers are a nice bonus.

What’s nicest, though, is that Eddie’s the only one who gets to see him like this. At least for now.

Richie jumps when Eddie clears his throat. The spatula in his hand droops when he turns around to see Eddie, arms crossed and leaning against the door frame. Eddie thinks he can see him swallow across the room.

“You’re cooking,” Eddie says, pushing off the doorframe to stand next to Richie. It’s not really a question. “Are you making–“

“The Richie-Tozier-I’m-Sorry-I’m-Such-A-Fuck-Up-Breakfast-Special?” Richie avoids eye contact and turns back face the stove. “Because yeah, that’s– I am.”

“I was just gonna say eggs, but.” The toaster dings, and sure enough, when Eddie turns his head, there’s bread in there. It’s not even burnt. He turns back to Richie. “You want help?”

Richie frowns. “It’s an apology breakfast. I wasn’t gonna wake you up until it was ready.”

Eddie snorts. “Yeah, well, I’m not just going to go stare at the wall until you get the toast all buttered. I’ll clear off the coffee table.”

Richie makes a noise of general dissent, but Eddie’s already walking back down the hallway, picking up one of Richie’s t shirts and chucking it into his open room on the way. Their coffee table is littered with beer cans from two days ago. Courtesy of one of the other waiters at the restaurant, of course. Richie definitely left them here, but the scattered brochures are Eddie’s. The cans are crumpled in his hands one by one and set by the door to take out with the garbage. The brochures are neatly stacked and pushed to the side.

Richie’s plating the eggs in the kitchen when Eddie gets back. Eddie helps him carry it all into the living room over his protests. “I’m not letting you break one of our plates, Richie. We only have four.”

“Five!” Richie says, somewhere in the hall behind him. “Remember, I found that one at the thrift store the other day? The one with the map of America with all the Waffle Houses–“

“How could I forget?” Eddie cuts him off. He sets the plates down on the coffee table. “Where’s the rose?”

Richie blanches. “Oh shit, did you want flowers? I thought you didn’t want me to–“

“I dunno, Rich. You kind of implied you wanted to make me breakfast in bed.” Richie twists his mouth and looks pained. Eddie feels a little bad. “Kidding,” he says, dropping to sit down next to the coffee table. “I’m just kidding.”

Richie sits across from him and pushes Eddie’s plate towards him, and then a fork. Eddie picks it up.

“I just wanted to say, on the record, that I’m– “ Richie starts, and Eddie cuts him off.

“Look, you already apologized with breakfast.” Richie opens his mouth to speak, so Eddie quickly adds, “And I really don’t want to talk about it.”

He kind of doeswant Richie to apologize to him, but that would mean officially solidifying that it made Eddie upset. Which Richie already knows, but the why of it would open a whole can of worms. Best to change the subject so that Richie doesn’t even think about it, anymore.

“You sure?” Richie looks dubious. _Just play along,_ Eddie thinks at him. Richie pauses, searches Eddie’s face. Whatever he finds there, he continues with, “Because I’ve only got a limited amount of these babies in me. I’m a cold motherfucker.”

Eddie almost sighs with relief. He rolls his eyes instead. “You’re so full of shit,” he says, picking up and biting into a piece of toast. “Look, Rich, we’re good. Don’t worry about it.”

“Yeah?” Richie doesn’t look convinced. Eddie swallows and nods. “Okay, then.”

At least a part of him realizes that this is unfair. Richie gives a fuck about what Eddie thinks, and Eddie is flat out denying him the chance to clear things away. But he can’t. He shouldn’t have even said anything about it last night. Because if Richie really thinks about it, he’s going to put something together. And nothing good can come from that.

They’re quiet while they eat. Eddie misses Richie’s endless talking. He doesn’t ever hate it, even. He’s about to open his mouth and say something, when Richie beats him to it. “Wanna go to the beach?”

“Do I– it’s not a beach, Richie. It’s a lake.”

“Lake, sh-make. There’s sand, there’s water.”

Eddie wrinkles his nose. “Lake water.”

“Come on, it can’t be worse than the beaches in Maine. Which you’ve only been to once.”

“So have you!”

Richie just grins, waits for Eddie to give in. Eddie looks up at the ceiling, because yeah, he’s going to say yes, but he’ll say it a whole lot faster if Richie is smiling at him. He has some pride to maintain.

Neither of them have work. It’ll probably take them an hour to get there, on transit. Plenty of time for their stomachs to settle. “You already know I’m going to say yes,” Eddie groans finally. 

“That’s why it’s fun to ask.” Richie jumps up. “You have a swimsuit, right?”

“You’ve seen it.” Eddie starts stacking plates.

“Right! How could I forget,” Richie says, taking the plates out of his hands. They’d taken a detour to the shore when they’d left Maine. Both of them wanted to waste no time in the state, but neither of them had been to the ocean before. The water was still cold, but they changed into swimsuits anyway and dunked their heads under, once. A baptism of sorts. Eddie and Richie had stood at the shore afterwards, feet in the water. Eddie had never known something to stretch on and on like that. The salt water had stung a blister on his ankle.

After breakfast is cleared away, they take the train to a beach on Lakeshore. They could go to one closer to their apartment, just head east until they hit water. But Richie and Eddie are both still star struck by the skyscrapers of Chicago, and they seek them out when they can. The L carries them through neighborhoods, shotgun duplexes like theirs passing by along the tracks. And then they dip down, Eddie’s stomach floating as the houses slip away through a narrowing sliver out the window.

Underground, the subway tunnels are hot and muggy. The heat in the car builds, Eddie’s legs sticking to the seat where his shorts end. Richie holds Eddie’s backpack in his lap–there was no way Eddie was letting their towels touch the inside of Richie’s. There’s sunscreen in there, too, and a bag of grapes they’d bought on the way to the train.

The train spits them out to the concrete heat of the city. Glass magnifying the sun and bouncing it up off the concrete. It’s the middle of July, the hottest time of the year. Richie’s hair is simultaneously losing its curls, and fluffing up. He runs his hands through it, and it doesn’t help.

Eddie’s wearing his sneakers, beach shoes in the backpack, but Richie wasn’t bothered by exposing his feet on the train and wearing his flip-flops. They smack against the pavement as they walk. A couple of times, they’re crowded into walking single file down the sidewalk. Eddie winds up behind Richie, those times. He watches his backpack, slung on Richie’s shoulders. He watches the backs of Richie’s heels, bony and scabbed and bare by the flip-flops. They pass through a wealthy neighborhood, real estate driven up by the view of Lake Michigan. Low hanging branches dip over the sidewalk. Petals litter the ground, from the trees, maybe, but Eddie doesn’t see any flowers.

It takes long minutes walking along the lake, dodging bicycles and joggers, to finally get to the sand. Eddie marches Richie through the towels and umbrellas and people until he finds a spot, close enough to the water. Richie immediately shucks his flip-flops and tears off his shirt while Eddie lays out one of their extra towels to sit on. Richie’s swim trunks are Hawaiian, of course. The water is probably freezing but he runs out into it anyway, splashing through the small waves like a dog. His back is three shades lighter than his arms, and no part of him is tan. Eddie sits with his knees half bent, curling his hands in the sun warmed sand. He finds himself mapping the moles on Richie’s shoulders with his eyes. The one to the left of his spine. On the side of his ribs. Lines he’ll never trace with his fingers. Not in the way he wants.

“You coming?” Richie’s standing above him, pushing dripping water out of his eyes. A drop lands on Eddie’s shoulder, and he flinches away. It raises goosebumps on his skin. Richie’s hand is cold where he grips Eddie’s forearm, and then he’s letting himself be pulled up. Letting Richie tow him towards the water, tossing his sunglasses behind him. Hoping they land on the towel. Tries not to think about the countless bodies that have lain on the sand before them, and all the things they might have left behind.

“Wait–sunscreen,” Eddie suddenly remembers, before Richie can drag him out into the waves. The wind coming off the lake whips against his t shirt.

Richie wipes a drop of water off his nose. “Pretty sure I’m already a lost cause,” he says, shrugging one shoulder to showcase one of his moles. His hair is slicked down against his head, crow-feather black. “One of these guys is probably pre-can–“

“Come on,” Eddie interrupts, catching Richie’s wrist to pull him back to their towel. “I’ll make you go to a dermatologist, I swear to God–“ He tries not to show how much it still worries him. It’s a miracle his mother let him leave the house, after everything she read about skin cancer. They pass a woman sunbathing, the sun winking off her shoulders, shining with baby oil.

“No, don’t, I think I’m meant to die young and beautiful. It’s more romantic that way.”

“Pretty sure no one thinks dying of skin cancer is _romantic_ , Rich.”

“Don’t call me Rich. Call me Richie Jean Parker,” Richie says seriously as Eddie pulls the sunscreen out of his backpack. “RJ for short.”

“You gonna dye your hair blonde?” Eddie tugs his shirt off.

Richie plops down next to him. “I think if I spend enough time here it’ll just– lighten on its own. Do my back?”

“Sure,” Eddie says. Richie’s skin is cold against his hands from the water, and then warm again from his natural body heat. Eddie tries to rub the sunscreen in as platonically as possible.

“You need me to do yours?” Richie asks when Eddie’s done, painting his face like they’re playing war again.

“Nope,” Eddie says quickly. “I can reach myself.”

“So can I!” Richie holds his hand up for a high five. Eddie ignores it. Richie reroutes. “I should have known you were flexible,” he says approvingly. “You got that from your mom. You should’ve _seen_ the way–“

“No,” Eddie says. He wants to rub out the sunscreen on Richie’s face, smooth his finger along his eyebrow. Push his hair back, where a curl has already sprung forward, wet and spiraling. He looks younger without his glasses, freckles more obvious. His eyelashes look longer.

Richie goes out into the water with his face still striped in sunscreen. Eddie picks his way through the waves. It’s as cold as he thought. Crushed shells shift under his feet. It’s nice for about two seconds before Richie dunks him.

Eddie comes up spluttering. Water streams into his eyes and he wastes no time pushing Richie under. Richie screams delightedly as Eddie splashes him.

Later, back on the towels, Richie tries to rinse the grapes in the lake. Eddie stops him, but won’t eat them unwashed, so he leaves with them to find a shower or a sink. He can see the beach bathrooms, a long low building way off in the distance. He remembers the last time he chanced a visit to one and think that’d he’d rather just eat the grapes unwashed. Then he spies an open air shower up ahead, a hundred feet down the bike trail.

The shower splashes his feet as he extends his arms into the spray. He probably makes for a stupid picture like this–arms stiff, holding grapes, shorts too short. He’s remembered to be self conscious now, about his skinny frame, and wishes he hadn’t. It stings where his sunglasses are resting on the bridge of his nose, and Eddie knows his shoulders are already freckling. He pushes down lingering fears of unknown moles and dangerous sunburns and makes his way back to Richie, grapes dripping lukewarm water.

Richie’s still laying down, propped on his elbows and a few drags into a cigarette. He taps the ashes off and carefully puts it out in the sand when Eddie sits down next to him. He pops a few of the grapes in his mouth.

“They’re kinda warm,” Eddie says, half apologizing.

“They’d be colder if we just dunked them in the lake, like I said we should. The water’s so fucking cold, I don’t even have a dick anymore. Actually– you like frozen grapes? ‘Cause I’ve got an idea _and_ a plan.”

Eddie draws a circle in the sand with the tip of his finger. “It’s not so bad near the shore.”

“I like going far out. And now,” Richie presses one of his feet to Eddie’s calf, “My feet are numb.”

“Jesus.” Eddie twists away from his foot. It’s cold like ice. “Just warm them up in the sand.”

“I’m thinking of borrowing some oil,” Richie nods at a woman a few towels away. She’s facedown, strings of her bikini untied. Her bare back stretches on and on, all tanned, smooth skin. “Get in on that. Wanna grape?” 

Eddie curls his toes in the sand and lays down, folding his hands over his stomach. “No, thanks,” he says, closing his eyes. “There’s probably some kind of flesh eating bacteria in those pipes.”

“Come on,” Richie says. “Let me feed you. Like you’re a roman senator.”

“You’re so weird,” Eddie says, but he opens his mouth. Theres a beat, and then Richie’s finger is brushing against his lip. There's a grain of sand on the grape, probably transferred from Richie, but Eddie eats it anyway.

“Hail Caesar,” Richie says seriously.

“Where are my palm fronds?”

“Bossy.” Eddie hears rustling, and he opens his eyes to see Richie’s stood up abruptly. “Come out with me again?”

Eddie shakes his head. “I’ll watch our stuff.”

“Sure, sleeping beauty,” Richie teases. “Here.” He drops to rummage in Eddie’s backpack and finds the baseball hat he’d crammed in there before they left. He sets it on Eddie’s head at an angle. The bill rests over his sunglasses and shades his nose. “Don’t burn too bad, okay?” And then he’s gone, kicking up sand as he sprints out towards the waves.

They stay for another hour. Eddie naps for a little bit, the sun warm on his legs, his stomach. He eats a few more of the grapes. He feels almost brave for it. Richie’s managed to join a group throwing a frisbee around in the shallows, up to his ankles in lake water. Eddie watches the twist of his ribs, the way he tips his head back to laugh. His curls are starting to dry. Still heavy with water, they hang just above his shoulders.

Eddie make Richie carry their towels on the way back to the apartment, still damp and in need of an air dry. He’s relented and worn his flip flops home, and he wonders what kind of picture he makes. Navy swim shorts. His light brown t shirt, too loose and stretched at the neck. He’s still wearing his sunglasses. His hair dried messy from the water, and he’s got more freckles and his nose is pink. He looks like someone else, probably. Some one looser and easier than who he actually is. 

Richie chatters aimlessly on the way home. They brave the heated train stop again, turnstiles sticky against their hands. Eddie’s skin feels tacky, like the lake water left thin film all over him. Like the ocean, but silt instead of sand in his swim trunks, probably.

When they get to back the apartment, Richie dumps the towels on the floor and sits on the coffee table to kick his shoes off. Eddie scoops the towels off, ready to snap at Richie for making a mess. But when he opens his mouth, he catches sight of the back of Richie’s neck. The knob of his neck bone pushing up above the collar of his t shirt, his hair parted around it in dark waves. There’s a smear of dried sand there, and it sends a flash of heat right through Eddie, down to his toes.

Something’s definitely wrong with him, Eddie thinks, if he can spend the whole day around Richie and just want to hold him, and then the sight of sand on the back of his neck makes him want skin on skin and tangled sheets. The kind of noises he imagines Richie makes. The kind of noises he hopes he never has to hear, though their shared wall, Eddie in the other room.

Eddie clears his throat. “You’re tracking sand everywhere.”

“I’ll sweep!” Richie says, but Eddie’s already spun on his heels, off down the hall with the towels clutched in his arms.

Their back porch looks out on the backs of other duplexes and apartment buildings, nothing higher than three stories for a mile. Richie’s ash tray is balanced on the railing, crumpled cigarettes betraying his habit of starting one, putting it out, and then lighting up again. It takes a couple of times to stick, is all, is what he said when Eddie asked.

Eddie drapes the towels over the wood of the railing to dry. They flap half heartedly in the breeze. The sun won’t set for an hour, or more. Eddie needs to start on dinner, or heat up leftovers, or something. Instead, he bends at the waist to rest his forehead on his hands. In a minute, he’ll go inside. Shower the lake off, and then make Richie do the same. Boil some water for pasta. Find the half filled jar of sauce in the back of the fridge. Richie will play music. He’s been listening to a lot of the stuff from when they were kids, recently. The Cure. Tears for Fears. _Everybody Wants to Rule the World._ Old favorites.

For now, he keeps his forehead pressed to his knuckles. His skin is still sun warmed, and if he keeps his eyes closed, he can stave off everything inside of him surging to break out. Tamp it down.

 _I can’t live with him next year,_ Eddie thinks distantly. _It’s too hard._

Even as he’s standing, smoothing out the towels, opening the door to head back inside–he knows he’d stay, as long as he’s allowed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The yearning in this one. Oof. This chapter is also noticeably longer than the others and it's definitely not because I got carried away writing about going to the beach...it's very cold where I am. I spent a lot of time at the beach (like, a real beach with saltwater lol) growing up, so going to the lake in the summer instead was a bit of an adjustment . But I do like it. 
> 
> The Richie Jean Parker thing is a Baywatch reference. Of course. I fell in a bit of a Baywatch hole writing this chapter. What a show. 
> 
> Thanks for the response to the last chapter!


	5. Chapter 5

“You’re Eddie, right? Richie’s roommate?” 

The voice comes somewhere from Eddie’s left, and he glances up and over to see a tall man, white shirt unbuttoned past the collar of his undershirt.  _ One of Richie’s coworkers, then, _ Eddie thinks, and awkwardly offers him his hand to shake. The man takes it. “Nate.” 

“Oh! Yeah I’ve – Richie’s mentioned you,” Eddie says awkwardly. Nate flashes a grin, all white teeth. 

“Likewise. I’m pretty sure everyone at the restaurant is at least a little curious to find out who Richie’s Eddie is,” Nate says, his finger air quotes somewhat hindered by the beer in his hand. 

“That’s –” Eddie groans. “I can’t believe he– I told him not to–“ he gestures with one hand, before giving up and taking a sip from his own drink.  _ Richie’s Eddie. _ The possessive on Richie’s name has him at a loss. He doesn’t know how to explain that he’s not Richie’s anything – not like that. Not when even speaking the idea into existence would have unforeseen consequences that Eddie would rather just ignore. 

He’s been at this party for an hour, maybe. He’s regretted it pretty much the entire time. When Richie had begged him to come, Eddie had thought he’d actually  _ see  _ him here somewhere. And he did, briefly, but then Richie had quickly got sucked back into the crowd in the kitchen. Eddie had taken one look at his back, disappearing between two women waiting for the bathroom. Then he’d decided to stay in the living room. It’s less crowded, but there are still enough conversations swirling around Eddie that Nate raises his voice through his answer. 

“Don’t feel too bad about it, then. It provided a lot of fun speculation for the front of house. And the back of house, actually – he befriended the kitchen so fast I thought he must have known at least one of the cooks before hand. He has a knack for it, I guess.” 

“He has a knack for  _ something _ ,” Eddie mumbles. Nate doesn’t quite catch it, keeps talking anyway. 

“Half the time he makes you want to commit murder, but the other half…”

“There’s no half. There’s only premeditated or second degree, with Richie,” Eddie says darkly. Nate laughs. 

“So what, are you two–?” Eddie freezes, but Nate continues. “We’ve all been taking bets, and–“ 

Eddie panicked the first time someone asked if he and Richie were dating tonight. He’s still panicking now, but it’s his third time or so. His quick rebuttal is more practiced now. At least that answers that about how Richie’s work feels about people like him. If only they knew that they’re barking up the wrong tree with Richie. He’s been debating all night whether or not he should tell him about it. 

Eddie’s mid head shake when Richie’s arm drops around his shoulders out of nowhere. “Aw, come on Nate, haven’t you heard of a civil union?” 

Eddie elbows him in the side. If Richie hangs on any longer he’ll hear the fast staccato of Eddie’s heart. Richie shies away from Eddie’s elbow, body curving around the point of contact. Eddie immediately misses the weight of his arm. “Where the hell were you, asshole?” 

“Someone was stuck in the bathroom,” Richie says, like that explains everything. 

“Someone, or some _ ones _ ?” Nate pipes in helpfully. 

Richie grins and shoots Nate a finger gun. Eddie smacks it away. “Some _ ones _ .” 

“I’m sure they’re happy for  _ your  _ help,” Eddie says sarcastically. “I’d swear off dating forever if I tried to get it up in a bathroom and suddenly you were there.” 

“Of course you’d swear it off,” Richie says, slinging his arm back around Eddie’s shoulders. “You’d catch one look at this mug and you wouldn’t be searching anymore. I’m your forever home.” 

“I’m not a dog,” Eddie says, crossing his arms. 

“I’m not so sure! You just implied you’d be up for getting hot n’heavy in a stranger’s bathroom, Eds. Who knew you had it in you?” 

“Oh, gross, I definitely wouldn’t. I was just saying  _ if I did _ – “ 

Nate smiles, amused, before clapping Richie on the shoulder and wandering away. Eddie watches him go with a sinking feeling in his stomach. He rolls his shoulder, and Richie gets the point, leaning back against the wall. 

“Great. Now Nate thinks – “ Eddie gestures wildly. What  _ does  _ Nate think? How many people are walking around thinking he’s Richie’s – what? Live in boyfriend? 

“I hope you got a chance to talk to people,” Richie says, ignoring the apparent implications. “Everyone got all excited when I told them you were coming. Made me want to hog you more.” 

“Thank you for restraining yourself,” Eddie says drily. He’s only a little bitter that Richie basically abandoned him to this crowd of twenty-something year olds. “Your sacrifice has been noted. Hey, you think you could practice it sometime? Just to, you know, give me a break every once in a while.” 

Richie finishes the drink in his hand and reaches for Eddie’s. Eddie lets him take it, fingers unresisting. “No can do, Eds. You’re like a magnet, and I’m – also a magnet.” 

Eddie notices, for the first time, how Richie’s kind of listing to one side. “How much punch have you had?” 

“It’s not punch! It’s  _ sangria _ .” 

Eddie steals his cup back. “There’s definitely way more rum in this than you thought.” 

Richie looks at him, half betrayed. “How much have  _ you  _ had?” Before Eddie can open his mouth to answer, Richie checks the bare skin of his wrist. “Hm. Maybe we should go.”

Eddie would like nothing more, but he still twists his mouth and looks up at Richie. “You sure?” 

“Yeah. Trains’ll stop running soon.” 

Eddie’s eyes go to the clock above the hall in surprise. Time has passed more than he realizes. Richie puts a hand on Eddie’s shoulder. “Help me find my jacket?”

The train is quiet this time of night. A man mumbles to himself at the far side of the car. Richie stares at his reflection in the darkened window. Eddie almost opens his mouth to tell Richie about how mixed up everyone is at his work – how many times Eddie had had to say  _ No, we’re just friends _ . But when he thinks about it, he’s not sure Richie will find it funny at all. So he doesn’t say anything. 

“Oh, hey,” Richie says, as Eddie’s unlocking their apartment door. “I was talking to Jake today and he said he’s getting rid of his bed frame. Thirty bucks and it’s yours—thirty five and he’ll drive it over. You interested?” 

Eddie frowns. “Jake?” 

“Busboy? He had the…the chain necklace? And the jean shorts?” 

“Oh.” The door swings open. “Uh, yeah, that’d be great, thanks. I mean, I want to look at it first.” 

‘Sure. I think it’s a little broken–something about knocking it into the wall too many times…” Pause. “Okay, just kidding, it’s not broken. He’s just moving.” 

“Ha, ha, ha.” Eddie toes out of his shoes, leaving them at angle in the entry way next to all of the others. About once a week he forces Richie to help him put them all away. At this rate, Eddie’s going to get swept down the stairs and into the street by an avalanche of sneakers. “Wait–you don’t have a bed frame either. You’re really ok with me getting it?” 

Richie lifts one shoulder. “Yeah, I think you care more about it than I do.” He grins wolfishly. “Plus, all of my hot fucks are gonna be really fucking confused when I bring them home and there’s something respectable in there. Bare mattress on the floor is how they like it, and I’m happy to deliver. I hide my pillows in the closet just to ramp up the atmosphere.”

Eddie wrinkles his nose. “You such a liar.” Richie hasn’t brought anyone home before. Yet. “You totally sleep with sheets. I bet you haven’t even changed yours since we moved in.” 

“Uh, yeah, why would I?” 

Eddie pretends to consider. “Fair point, since you’re definitely not fucking anyone in that bed, so I guess there really is no need.”

“Of course there isn’t, I only do it in your room.” 

Eddie gags. “If you  _ ever _ –“ 

“I was  _ kidding _ !” Richie sits down on their coffee table to yank at his shoe laces. “I don’t want to die before I can save enough to marry your mom good and right, and doing  _ that  _ seems like a pretty quick way to get the ball rolling on an early death.” 

“That’s a nice change of pace. I was starting to worry you were leading her on. Good to know you want to make an honest woman of her. ” Eddie’s decided to throw him a bone, but Richie’s half drunk and struggling with his shoes. Eddie leaves him to get a cup of water from the kitchen. He fills it straight from the tap–a plastic Denny’s cup. The printed logo on the side is already fading away. A cartoon cat is missing an eye. 

He hears Richie get up while he’s still in the kitchen, so he checks Richie’s room first. Clothes are strewn all over the floor. The rumpled mattress is empty, sheets all twisted. 

Eddie stands in the doorway of his own room next. Richie’s face down on Eddie’s bed, most of his body hanging off and slumped on the floor. Eddie sets the cup down on the floor carefully. “Take your jeans off, you’re going to get train germs in my sheets.” 

“I’m not convinced you wash these as much as you say you do,” Richie mumbles into Eddie’s pillow. 

“I’d wash them more if you didn’t take my quarters all the time!” 

“But then I’d have no clean clothes for work.” Richie rolls onto his back. 

Eddie nudges the cup of water towards him with his foot before starting to undo the buttons on his shirt. Richie whistles slow, and Eddie rolls his eyes. “I’ll change in the bathroom, I swear to God. Drink your water.” 

Richie dutifully sits up, curls mussed. “Where’s the crazy straw?” He asks, but takes a long gulp anyway. Eddie steps out of his pants, and Richie is thankfully silent. 

“Can I stay in here?” Richie says, after the water’s all gone. 

“If you take off your jeans, yeah,” Eddie says. 

“I thought you’d never ask – is it too eager if I take them off right away? Do I look desperate?” Richie’s already popped the button of his pants. “I just want to return the favor – where’d you learn to strip like that, Eddie?” 

Eddie is pretty sure he’s the least sexy thing in the world right now, pulling on pajama pants and a t shirt. His socks are still on. “I changed my mind. You can sleep in your gross disgusting bed. I hope you get lice from one of your fake hook-ups.” 

“Noooo, Eddie,” Richie whines, stretching out the last ‘e’. He’s currently trying to wiggle out of his jeans without getting up. “You know the walk is too far to my room. I’ll…I’ll throw up! Because I’m too drunk!” 

Eddie kneels on his mattress and lays down next to Richie. “I know you’re lying to me,” he says, flat on his back. “I’m more partial to you when you tell the truth.” 

“Yeah right! What, I’m just supposed to say that your sheets are cleaner and I’m feeling lazy? I  _ know _ that doesn’t tug at your heartstrings.” 

“Sure it does,” Eddie closes his eyes. “I mean, it tugs at my superiority complex. I like when you admit that my way of living is objectively better. “ 

“I mean, if we’re  _ tugging  _ at things now…” 

“Tozier, the ice is so thin where you are that you’d better come up with a contingency plan. You know, for when you fall through.” 

Eddie hears the telltale sounds of the jeans finally coming off and Richie throwing them to the floor. “I know you’ll save me,” he says, rolling onto his side to face Eddie. Eddie mirrors him, two commas curving towards each other. He can only see half of Richie’s face where it’s sunk into the pillow. “Did you like the party?” 

Eddie shrugs. “It was fine. Too much Ace II Base.” 

Richie scoffs. “You’re so full of shit. There was maybe  _ one song. _ Just because there wasn’t any  _ Madonna _ –“ He laughs when Eddie wacks him on the arm. 

“Fine. There wasn’t  _ any  _ Cyndi Lauper, so the party was shit. Are you happy now? Gonna make fun of the shit I like, now?” Eddie’s so tired it feels like his face is heavy. Richie seems like he’s on the verge of passing out. 

“Nah,” Richie mumbles, eyes closed. Eddie watches his eyelashes over the top of his pillow. “I like your music. You were…” 

“I was what?” Eddie says, suspicious. 

“Don’t be mad at me, okay? Just let me say what I’m gonna say.” 

“I’ll decide if I’m going to be angry when I hear what it is!” 

“Yeah,” Richie says. “It’s just…it made me happy, seeing you dance to Whitney Houston, or Girls Just Want Have Fun, or whatever, when we were kids.” He sleepily jerks his arms above his head in what Eddie thinks is supposed to mimic his thirteen-year-old dance moves. 

Eddie’s face warms. “Shut up.” 

“I’m serious!” 

“I knew I shouldn’t have showed you that tape,” Eddie grouses.

“No,” Richie says. “I’m glad you did.” He opens his eyes. “Hey, Eddie?” 

Eddie’s eyes are starting to drift closed. “There aren’t any more home videos, Rich, so don’t bother asking. The only one there is is from Georgie’s birthday party, so…”

“Nah, it’s something…I need to tell you something.” 

Eddie hums, both eyes closed now. He’s already drifting off, limbs heavy on his mattress. He can feel Richie’s body on the mattress next to him, even though they’re not touching. “Just tell me tomorrow.” 

Richie huffs a laugh. “That’s….it’s not..” he trails off, and Eddie’s almost fallen asleep before he speaks again. “You want the light off?” 

“Mm.” He’s afraid Richie is going to leave, but he just reaches over Eddie to click the lamp off. There’s a quick star burst of red behind Eddie’s eyes. And then it’s dark, Richie’s breath next to him in the dark, steady and slow. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have decided that Georgie is still alive in this au, no I will not be taking questions.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two heads up: there's some light recreational drug use in this chapter, and a fair bit of talk about John Hughes movies, so be prepared.

August, a dot on the horizon when Eddie and Richie first drove to Chicago, arrives. July’s heat crests to a peak in the first week, and then crashes, bringing cool mornings and evenings. Richie makes a show of dusting off his denim jacket. He’ll wear it in the mornings, and then it’s tied around his waist by noon. The same thing happens in Maine. Eddie never knows when to start wearing his fall clothes. Sharp breezes, straight off the cooling water of the lake, whip against the hems of his shorts when he walks to work. Goose bumps appear on his arms in the evenings, but he keeps wearing t shirts.

Eddie’s classes start soon. He’s bracing himself. Everything will change– his work schedule, for one. He’ll have to do homework in the evenings, or stay late at the library. It’s a thirty five minute train ride to campus. No more beach days on a whim. The sun still beats down at the high point of the day, and Eddie can already see summer ending.

He doesn’t mean to sit on the back porch and fixate, but it’s become a habit. The sun’s still an hour away from setting. When it does, the apartments across the alley are cast in pinks and orange. Burned gold at the edges. Richie still works nights most of the time, and it’s become almost like a ritual for Eddie, to sit and watch the sun go down alone.

So he’s turning it over in his mind, like a stone he picked up from the beach. Well worn and flat and smooth. It never goes away, but it becomes familiar.

The screen door on the back porch swings open. Eddie jumps, but it’s just Richie. His button down is open all the way. Cigarette tucked behind his ear. Eddie wants to take it and throw it the way Richie does when he’s done smoking. Just pop it between his thumb and forefinger. Watch it sail in an arch over the dumpsters in the alley.

He doesn’t. Richie leans up against him on the porch railing. He’s close enough that the hair on Eddie’s arms raise. When Eddie glances over, he can see the curve of Richie’s ribs flash against the dark blue of his shirt.

“You’re kinda mopey, today,” Richie says, handing Eddie a can of beer. Eddie sets it on the railing next to him. The can is already sweating condensation, cold against his hand. He wipes it off on his shorts.

“I’m _not_.” Richie quirks his eyebrows and smiles. Eddie tries again with a different tone. “I’m not.”

“ _I’m not_.” Richie repeats it in a deep baritone. He hits his chest with his fist afterwards. “What, are you on your period or something?”

“Oh joy,” Eddie says drily, leaning forward onto his hands to look out across the alleyway. “I was worried you were growing up or something, but it looks like you’re still pretty set on your jokes fucking the line between _offensive_ and _not funny._ Dickwad. _”_

 _“Fucking the line_ ,” Richie laughs. “Fuck, you’re – you wanna take my place, or something? You do the whole storyteller comedian thing and I’ll just – major in, Biology and become a famous doctor, right?”

“Doctors aren’t famous,” Eddie grumbles.

This is the part of the conversation where Eddie could step neatly onto the path they always go down. The one where he says he’s undeclared. Then Richie will say yeah, but we all know what you’re gonna do. And Eddie will say oh great, I’m glad I have your support. Asshole.

He doesn’t start. Just pops the tab on his beer. It hisses against his hand, and the first cold sip fizzes on his tongue. Richie’s quiet until Eddie looks over at him, and then he raises his eyebrows over his own can as he takes a long sip.

Eddie sets the beer back down, clears his throat. “How long’s this welcome committee supposed to last?”

Richie checks his watch. It’s a Rugrats collectable. They stopped at Burger King on the way to Chicago. Richie got a kids meal just to get the prize, and stole Eddie’s fries after he finished his apple slices. He doesn’t wear it at work. “She said she’d be here at seven. Cool your jets, Dr. K.”

Eddie straightens. “Don’t – “ he starts, when he catches sight of a car pulling into the alleyway. Richie take a moment to squint at whoever’s behind the wheel. Then he’s off, beer in hand, flying down the steps to the tiny backyard. Eddie follows his rhythmic footsteps, turning down the flights of stairs.

Richie’s swept Bev into his arms by the time Eddie picks his way through the back yard. She grins over his shoulder at Eddie. When she holds her arm out to him, he lets himself get pulled into a three person hug. They hold each other so tightly that he doesn’t know where he ends and they begin.

Eventually they untangle their arms and begin the business of getting Bev and her backpack up into the apartment. She takes a minute to find a bed sheet in her trunk and snaps it open in the alleyway. It’s dotted with tiny violets. Then she spreads it over her boxes and suitcases and sewing machine in the trunk of her station wagon.

Richie hops to the fridge as soon as they’re back up in the kitchen. He presses a beer into Bev’s hand, and when she opens it, it foams up, spilling over her knuckles. She laughs, and they move back out to sit on the shitty lawn chairs Richie found walking home last week. Eddie sprayed them with the hose out back before deeming them acceptable.

She’s only staying with them for a night before she’s heading west. She’s going to tiny college in Washington. Close to the ocean. So they have about sixteen hours with her, give or take. She’s stopping for the night again in South Dakota.

“It’s out of the way,” she says, chin in hand, “But I want to drive through Montana. The way Ben talks about it, you know.”

Richie plucks his sunglasses from where they’ve been resting around his neck and puts them on. “Now – I’m no expert in US geography, but – “

Eddie snorts. “The hell you aren’t. Remember fifth grade – you couldn’t label that map with the states to save your life.”

“I bet Eddie was in charge of the map on the drive over, huh?” Bev’s eyes dance behind her beer.

Richie’s mouth drops open in mock outrage. “That was eight years ago!”

Eddie grins. “Yeah, even I thought you would be better at it by now.”

“Eds gets off a good one!” He slides down in his chair. “So Bev. What’s on the menu?”

Bev slides her own sunglasses on from where they’ve been resting in her hair. They’re cherry red. When she grins, she’s as beautiful as she’s ever been.

They drink until dusk descends on the city and a few stars come out. It’s drawn out enough that Eddie never gets more than pleasantly buzzed. They order a pizza and drink cheap beer. They snack on the fancy stuff Eddie picked up special after his shift. Feta, the good kind, soaked in brine. A tin of salted cashews. Fizzy lemonade that Richie mixes vodka in and then immediately hates. Bev switches their cups and grimaces when she takes a sip. It’s all stuff his mom never let him have – one part owing to his “allergies”; the other her own personal tastes.

Bev and Richie take two smoke breaks. The second time, after dinner, they pass a joint back and forth while Eddie cleans in the kitchen. The back door is open, and the smell of weed drifts through the screen door. Eddie can see them, just vague outlines illuminated by the sprawling kitchen light. When they take a drag, their faces light up briefly.

He’s shuffling around the kitchen picking up beer cans. He hears soft laughter, and Bev says, “Have you–“

Eddie thinks he hears Richie sigh. “You think I would have and not called you?”

“Phone bill?”

“Please. I’ll put all my date money towards it. I’ve got a lot of cash now that Eddie’s mom – ”

“Fuck off, Trashmouth,” Eddie says, out of habit. He pushes the screen door open, empty cans in hand. The hinges creak, and Bev and Richie turn to him.

“Want to join?” Bev says, and Richie’s gaze bounces to her first, and then to Eddie. He used to ask Eddie the same thing, but Eddie said no enough that he just stopped. Normally Eddie would, but something about tonight is different. He meets Richie’s eyes and says, “Sure,” tossing the cans in their recycling bin.

Richie’s gaze stays on Eddie as he pinches the joint between his fingers, the way he’s seen people do it. It stays on Eddie when Bev says, “You’re going to cough, so don’t worry about it.” It stays when Eddie says, “I won’t,” and then Richie laughs and looks away.

He does cough. Richie pats him on the back a few times, and plucks the joint out of his hand, and he and Bev finish it.

His head is kind of swimmy the rest of the night. The beer makes his arms heavy. Time shifts a little, and they’ve moved to the front room. Eddie’s leaned in the doorway, watching Bev go through their crate of VHS tapes. Richie’s laid on his stomach next to her, propped up on his forearms. His head is dropped, shoulders shaking with laughter.

“I can’t believe – “ Bev stops and giggles. The VHS tapes clack against each other. “I can’t believe you guys have never seen Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” she manages. “You live in Chicago!”

Eddie crosses his arms and scowls. He suddenly wants to sit down very much. “You can’t believe it? Really? It’s about three kids who – _ditch_ school, and drive into the city – you think my mom took me to see it in theaters?”

Richie raises his head. “Hold on – I’ve seen it. You think I haven’t seen it?” He points at Bev. “Ferris is the fucking coolest _and_ he has a bitchy sister, _and_ I bear more than a passing resemblance to Mathew Broderick. I _am_ him.”

Bev laughs, short and disbelieving and fond. “And Eddie’s Cameron.”

Eddie frowns. “Again, I have no idea who you’re talking about.” Is Cameron the guy in the sports jersey? Or the girlfriend?

“You can be Sloan – But you’re still my Molly Ringwald, Bevvie,” Richie croons, leaning in close. So that answers that. Bev bats him away, laughing.

Eddie crosses the room and sits down heavily next to them, crosslegged on the rug. “I never got how that was supposed to be an insult. She’s…” he trails off. Pretty? He’s not attracted to her, obviously. But everyone else is, right?

“Aww, Eds, you have a crush on her? We can watch Sixteen Candles, later, if you want. I finally found my VHS player.” Richie digs through the box, looking for his copy of the movie. He gives up a second later when it doesn’t appear immediately.

“You say that like it was lost. I know for a fact that it was probably just in your room under some clothes the whole time! And we don’t even have a TV!”

“No TV?” Bev gasps, a hand across her chest. “No TV for our very own Mike Teevee?”

Richie raises his index finger and slowly turns his wrist to point it at Eddie. “You know, I always thought Eddie kind of looked like that kid.”

“I do not!”

Bev tilts her head. “Mm, I kind of see it.”

“Eddie, how do you feel about being a cowboy for Halloween? No relation to the Wonka movie.”

“Shut up. Sixteen Candles sucks, anyway.”

“You’re right there, Eds – Pretty in Pink is better.” He lights up. “Oh, my god, Bev is totally Andie, and I’m Duckie.”

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Duckie wanted to _marry_ Andie, genius.”

Richie looks at Bev, quickly. “Uh, no, he didn’t. And,” he says, crossing his heart, “There’s no way I’m getting in between Ben and true love.”

Bev guffaws. “Oh, my god, Ben is totally whats-his-name from that movie.”

Eddie shakes his head. “Nuh uh. Ben has a spine.”

Richie asks. “You’re so hard on Blaine, Eddie.”

Bev lays back on the carpet. She smiles over at Eddie and plays with her key necklace. “So your mom let you watch Pretty in Pinkbut not Ferris Bueller’s Day Off _?_ ”

“Of course not,” Eddie snorts, drawing his knees up to his chest. “I watched it at Richie’s house.”

“My sister was _babysitting_ , we were like ten,” Richie quickly clarifies. “But that doesn’t answer my question, Eddie.”

Eddie furrows his eyebrows and looks over at him. “What question, dickhead?”

“Uh,” Richie says. “Why…” He trails off, starts again. “ _Why_ are you so mopey today.”

“ _That_ question? From like four hours ago? I _said_ I’m not,” Eddie says defensively. He hugs his knees tighter .

Richie narrows his eyes at him.“Well, yeah, not now. But earlier, you totally were.”

The mood has shifted abruptly. Bev is watching them quietly. Eddie drops his head into his knees and squeezes his eyes shut. He doesn’t have to see the considering look on her face that way. He doesn’t think he’s going to say anything because he doesn’t even know the answer. He _has_ been, he just didn’t want Richie to pick up on it.

“It’s…I’m not mopey, it’s just. Summer is ending,” he says, muffled into his lap. His lip presses against a scar on his knee, long healed. He got it when he was thirteen or fourteen. They had been biking around the train yard by Niebolt street when it started raining suddenly. Eddie’s tire had skidded against the crumbling asphalt at the edge of the road. He’d been thrown from the bike, torn his knee open, felt the bone in his arm give. The Losers had all fluttered around him, but Richie had put him on the back of his seat and taken him home. Then he went back the next day for Eddie’s bike. He’d kept it in his garage for weeks, just so that Eddie’s mom wouldn’t throw it out.

“What, you don’t want to go to classes?” Richie sounds confused. Eddie still won’t look.

“No, it’s just. It’s not going to be the same anymore. Like. The beach, and stuff. We never went to the Field museum.”

Eddie doesn’t even make sense to himself. This is why he probably shouldn’t smoke. He expects Richie to laugh at him. But he’s just quiet for a long time, and then he says, “It doesn’t have to stop once you start school. You’ll still have weekends, man.” Eddie feels him shift closer. “We can still look at bunch of dinosaur bones together. Plus, you’re gonna see me everyday, still. I’m not gonna disappear just because you’re in Lit 101 and I’m at Second City with a bunch of other try hard wannabes.”

Eddie likes him so much that it physically hurts. When he lifts his head, Richie is closer than he thought. He lays a hand on Eddie’s shoulder. “I’m not gonna just let you study all the time, man. I left your mom behind in Derry for this.”

Beverly laughs, sits up to give Eddie hug. He leans into her for a second. Then he struggles to stand. “I need to pee.”

In the bathroom, Eddie stares at his reflection fora long time. His eyes are huge in the mirror. His hair is hanging over his forehead. His stare is too dark. _What do I look like right now?_ runs through his head, ever present. _Someone else, someone else, someone else,_ he chants back. One day it’ll stick.

He washes his hands and scrubs them up and down his face. Richie’s put on a record since he left. It floats down the hallway as Eddie makes his way back to the front room. He has a strange relationship with the floor. It’s like it’s closer than he thought it would be. His footsteps are clumsy and heavy, sharp against the scuffed hardwood.

Bev and Richie are on the couch. Her backpack is at their feet, next to their curled up legs. She’s got his hand in between both of hers. When Eddie gets closer, he sees the bottle of nail polish on the cushion next to them.

He snorts a laugh and goes to sit on the floor next to them. “Are you even allowed to have painted nails? You work in food service.”

Richie frowns down at his nails, and Bev pats his hand consolingly. “We’ll buy some remover and get it off before your next shift.” She turns around in her chair. “Eddie can have them though. You aren’t actually dealing with unpackaged food, right?”

Eddie shakes his head. “I’m not – no. No thank you.”

Thankfully, Bev doesn’t push it, just shrugs and turns back to Richie. “Hold still,” she says, starting in on his pinky finger.

Richie does for about two seconds, before the song changes and his head jerks up. “Wait, we have to dance.”

It’s the Pixies. _Wave of Mutilation._ Bev tells Richie that if he messes up his nails she’ll kill him. And then they all stand, turn the lights off, and jump around in the living room with the lights from the street pouring in their curtain-less windows. Bev and Richie scream the lyrics at each other, and Eddie drops his head and lets the alcohol and the weed loosen his limbs until he doesn’t care that anyone on the street could see them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully it won't take me as long to update this fic again – along with much of the world I suddenly have vast amounts of free time so hopefully that will translate to working on this. 
> 
> Some notes: 
> 
> Again, I know there's a lot of John Hughes talk but it felt sacrilegious not to mention it. For a quick reference: Ferris, Cameron, and Sloan are from Ferris Bueller's Day Off; Duckie, Andy and Blaine are from Pretty in Pink – which I watched recently, and my third eye opened immediately because a) Duckie and Andie truly are Richie and Bev, and b) Duckie is gay, no matter what John Hughes thinks. What love triangle??? 
> 
> I think that's everything-- I have more of a plan for the next few chapters and the end is somewhat in sight. Before I was just truly vibing but I think the chapters are going to have more direction now (re: any). Lol.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Heads up, there is one use of the f slur towards the end of the chapter

In the morning, Bev drags them into the loop to get to the Art Institute when it opens at 10:30. Eddie buys Richie and Bev coffee to go from the shop across the street as they wait in line. Standing there on the steps, amidst the other people waiting to get in–tourists and Midwesterners, in from the suburbs on a Saturday morning–they really do look like the kind of interesting, strange, beautiful leads of a coming of age movie. Bev, with her perfectly circular sunglasses and fringe jacket. Richie’s painted nails tapping against his ripped jeans. _ Strange creatures _ , Eddie thinks, unprompted, watching their hair whip around as he ascends the steps towards them, coffee tray in one hand. The two of them always did feel like siblings, or cousins. More alike than they are different. That, and they’ve had the same haircut since they were thirteen. 

Bev trades a kiss on the cheek for the disposable cup of coffee Eddie hands her. Richie says, “And where’s mine?”, mock wounded. Eddie presses the second coffee into Richie’s hand, open and waiting, and scoffs. 

“Kisses are exchanged for goods and services, Rich,” Beverly says, raising her eyebrows over the lid of her drink. 

“I can think of a few  _ goods and services– _ “ Richie starts, before Bev smacks a kiss on the side of his eyebrow. Just to shut him up. She stands on her tiptoes to do it, and Eddie stares at the battered toes of her combat boots. 

It’s stupid to be jealous of Bev, and Eddie isn’t. She has Ben, and Richie doesn’t feel that way about her. It would be dumb. 

Maybe he’s just jealous of the way she can express that kind of affection in public. Or at all. Simply and easily. Eddie couldn’t do that. Not even if it was with a girl. Or any boy; it wouldn’t even have to be Richie. 

“What do you think, Eds?” Richie is saying, puckering up and making obnoxious kissing noises in Eddie’s direction. “You wanna keep this kiss-o-gram going?” 

“Ugh,” Eddie says, wrinkling his nose in disgust and leaning away. Bev rolls her eyes good naturedly. 

Behind them, Michigan Avenue starts and stops as throngs of tourists pass through the intersection in waves. Buskers play drums on the sidewalk, the beat of their drumsticks rising up past steel and glass and concrete to mingle with the warm city air, humid with exhaust. Richie tugs at Eddie’s elbow after they pass through the heavy glass doors of the Art Institute. Eddie lets himself be led to the ticketing area, where he gets in for free with his student ID. After Bev and Richie have gotten their passes, he grudgingly hands it over to them to laugh at. 

Bev traces the tip of her index finger over Eddie’s face, tiny and laminated. “You look so worried,” she says, biting her lip to hold back a grin. 

“And like you just got pulled in at three in the morning for shoplifting,” Richie crows. “What is this, a mug shot?” 

Eddie hears his voice rise in pitch as he says, “They didn’t tell me to smile!” He snatches it back and stuffs it in his wallet. 

Richie reaches for it back, but it’s already gone, tucked away in Eddie’s back pocket. “No, no, I liked it. It was very Doctor K.” 

“Ha,” Eddie huffs. He takes a map from the stand they’re lingering by and pretends to study it intently. “At least it was better than the picture on my license. When I try to smile I just look like I’m shitting myself.” 

Bev grimaces with held in laughter, but it’s true. Getting a driver’s license at all had been a miracle in an of itself. His mother had obviously hated the idea of him learning. She would have sold the car, but then she wouldn’t have been able to drive him to the hospital in the event that he got hurt. Or sick. Eddie had only convinced her by spinning it as a precautionary measure in the event that  _ she  _ got hurt. Or sick. 

Eddie doesn’t remember those manipulations fondly. He never felt anything while he did it, not even the rush of success when she’d relent. It was never a game. Just an act of survival. 

In the end she’d let him get his permit. Then she didn’t lift a finger to teach him, maybe hoping that he’d give up. But he’d gone to Bill, and he’d taught him with a careful confidence. Bill had gotten a hardship license when he was fifteen and his parents had both gotten jobs in Bangor. They’d been unable to take him to school, or pick him up from baseball practice. Or they just didn’t care enough. For three years, Bill lived alone during the school week, and his parents were ghosts passing through. Friday evening to Monday morning. 

Eddie’s heart had pounded all the way through the driver’s test, even after he passed. When he’d smiled for his picture, he’d looked strained and worried. It’s a particular source of embarrassment, but he still feels a kind of fierce pride when he sees his picture. Strained and worried and he’d done it anyway. 

Richie’s eyebrows push together. When he talks, he’s the one that sounds strained. “No, I….you look nice. When you smile. You should. Next time.” 

“Shut up,” Eddie says, cheeks warm. At this point, he’s gonna have the layout of the museum memorized. He folds the map shut sharply. “We gonna hang around all day?” 

“You just gotta practice,” Richie says, loping up the steps towards the impressionist gallery. He glances behind him and smirks. “You know, like when you–“ 

“Beep-beep,” Bev says. “For all our sakes.” 

With Bev as their lead, they make their way through the Impressionists. Tourists swirl around them, and other kids in their twenties, clearly art students. Bev and Richie blend right in with them – ugly shirts and battered shoes. Faded dungarees and oversized t-shirts. All blended with the moms and their kids in strollers, the old men and their grandchildren. 

Bev’s aunt is an elementary school teacher in Portland who does ceramics on the side. “She pretty much waterboarded me with this stuff,” she explains, “So now I know everything there is to know about brushstrokes.” 

“I know a thing or two about  _ brushstrokes, _ ” Richie mutters, but it’s non-performative enough. He leans closer to the painting they’re standing in front of. 

Eddie’s always on guard about mother figures, but Bev’s aunt seems nice. “Must have been pretty easy to convince her to let you go to art school,” he says, and tries hard to make it not sound bitter. 

Bev waves a hand. She has a ring on every finger except her pinky. “She said I could do pretty much anything, as long as I didn’t rack up too much debt. Or come back a Republican.” 

An older woman who definitely voted for Reagan gives them a look, but Bev ignores it. Richie, the most likely of them to make a scene, is engrossed. Eddie looks at the painting and tries to see what he’s seeing, but it’s the same as when he first looked. Gaunt eyes stare back at him.  _ Self Portrait, 1887.  _

“It’s weird that he painted this only a hundred years ago,” Richie says, leaning back. “It seems like it’d be longer.” 

Bev hums. “I heard that he used so much paint that if you cut it open, it’d still be wet under the first layer.”

“Well, don’t say  _ that  _ any louder,” Eddie mutters under his breath. “Might as well declare our intentions for grand-theft-Van-Gogh.” 

Richie steers him away. “Let’s go find something even more expensive for you to gripe in front of.” 

He keeps a hand on Eddie’s shoulder as they trail through the rest of the exhibit. Eddie can’t bring himself to shake it off. Maybe he’s worn down after the past month of living in close proximity with Richie. Maybe he’ll start folding so easily that they’ll just share a room. And brush each other’s hair at night. And pack lunches for each other with notes. 

The three of them make fun of the huge feet on the Rodin statue. Bev leads them past the massive O’Keeffe in the stair well. They keep wandering–past Korean vases and statues of Ganesh. Up the stairs again, and then they’re in competition to find the most ridiculous thing in the Modern wing. 

Back on the second floor, they enter an exhibit on Italian sculpture. It’s cold and dark. Eddie couldn’t give less of a fuck about the bronze statues, but Bev seems happy digging around for her sketchbook, so he’s content to hang back with Richie. 

“This stuff is old as shit,” Richie whispers. “Almost as old as your mom.” 

“So not funny,” Eddie whispers back. There aren’t many people in the exhibit, but he gets Richie’s instinct to lower his voice. Eddie’s just surprised he’s actually following it. 

“Almost as old as you, then,” Richie tries instead. “Your birthday is coming up, huh?” 

“You sound like a step dad.” Eddie’s always been uncomfortable with aging. He keeps thinking he’s going to hit a year when he feels his age. He hasn’t so far. The thing is, he doesn’t know if he feels older or younger than he is. 

“Yeah,  _ your  _ stepdad, after I marry your mom. You like football?” Richie affects a Midwestern accent, thick and lilting. It comes through even with the whisper. “I’m gonna give you lots of little brothers and sisters, Eds, and then we’ll have enough players for a whole team.” 

He laughs when Eddie walks away and snags him by the back of his shirt, yanking him back. Eddie bats his hand away. “You’re gonna stretch out my t-shirt,” he snaps, forgetting to whisper. A woman across the room looks up at them. 

“Wanna buy an overpriced slice of cake or something at the museum cafe?” Richie says, voice low. He’s behind Eddie and closer than he thought. 

Eddie shivers. Richie’s been sneaking up on him a lot, lately. Glances up at Beverly, who’s just gone deeper into the exhibit. “Sure,” he says, against his better judgement. He shouldn’t be alone with Richie, not when he feels like this all the time. It’s worse when they’re here. In the dark, he has to press close to Richie to read the plaques under the busts of men long since dead. In the cold, he can’t ignore Richie’s body heat.  _ Stupid temperature control _ , Eddie thinks, but. He’s alone with Richie so much that the damage has already been done. Irreversible. Worst of all, Eddie doesn’t even want to try and fix it. 

So they leave the darkened room. Eddie blinks in the light from the skylights above. It takes some trial and error to find the café, but Richie snags two chairs as Eddie gets in line. 

Eddie shoves his hands into his pockets. He doesn’t look behind himself to see if Richie is watching him. The back of his neck prickles. He buys one of those tarts with the fruit on top, and it’s more expensive than it should be. It comes with a fork, and Eddie clears his throat and asks for another one.  Richie rubs his hands together as Eddie approaches, the tart on a tiny plate in his hand. Tiny plate, tiny desert. Tiny plastic utensils. “You sure know how to treat a gal right,” Richie drawls, and digs in. Eddie sets his chin in his hand and picks some fruit off the top, pushing the strawberries to Richie. They’ve always been too slimy for him to enjoy. 

Bev finds them as Richie’s swiping the pad of his index finger around the plate for a remnant of custard. Eddie goes to stand, but she plops on Richie’s lap instead. He brings his hands up to steady her. Her boots poke out of the hem of her long floral skirt. 

“Well, boys,” Bev says, putting the paper napkin Eddie got with the tart into her purse, “I gotta hit the road soon. Mind if we head back to your place?” 

“Anything for you, Ms. Marsh,” Richie says, half lifting her up out of the chair. Like a dancer. His hands look huge on her waist. Long fingers pale against the blue of her skirt. There’s a cut on one of his knuckles. 

Eddie itches the whole way home. Out in the backyard again, Bev holds him long and tight. She doesn’t whisper anything in his ear. He gets the feeling she’s trying to tell him something, anyway. 

Once she’s all buckled into her seat, Richie leans down to talk to her, his forearms resting on her open window. She says something in a low voice, puts a hand on his cheek, and then pats him once. 

“Don’t kill each other!” She calls as she pulls away, putting her sunglasses on, and then she’s gone, the wind chasing her car back down the alleyway. 

Richie presses the heel of his hand to his forehead when she’s out of sight. Then he spins on his heel and strides past Eddie. Through the yard, up the back stairs, and into their apartment. Another gust of wind sweeps down the alley, pulled through by the tunnel the buildings create around it. It ruffles Eddie’s hair and he thinks he can see it, whipped up into the atmosphere as he stands in the yard alone.

Richie, Eddie thinks as he wearily climbs the stairs, is someone that he’s never going to fully understand. When he was a kid, and maybe more perceptive, Eddie’d thought of him as a pillbug, or a crab. Curled tight around a soft belly. It never fully lined up – Richie speaks his thoughts and wears his heart on his sleeve to the point of self destruction, but Eddie had sensed it all the same. And he had reconciled a long time ago with the fact that there are parts of Richie that he’s never going to let himself show Eddie. 

It just wouldn’t be so bad if he had no problem showing Bev. 

_ Some irony there, Eds,  _ Richie’s voice taunts him as he throws himself into cleaning the kitchen.  _ So Richie tells someone things he doesn’t tell you? Who do you have that you’re being honest with?  _

Eddie opens the fridge and tries to ignore the pathetic version of himself, an inch tall and soft and standing trial in the courtroom inside of his head.  _ But, but _ , he says, voice high,  _ but Richie and Eddie, Richie-and-Eddie, RichieandEddie…. _

There’s a take out container from two weeks ago that he immediately throws away. The milk’s sell by date was a day ago, but when he smells it he can’t tell if it’s bad. 

_ Isn’t there something you’re not telling him? Don’t you know that no one really knows anyone? What do you want, for him to be just as closed off as you are? As alone as you feel, sometimes? _

Eddie leans his forehead against the fridge. Cold air alights on the sheen of sweat on his forehead. “Richie,” he calls, unable to bear it. “Can you come here?” 

It takes a minute, but he hears Richie’s heavy footfalls come down the hall. 

“Is the milk bad?” Eddie says, crouched on the floor still, and not looking at him. 

“If it’s bad, it’s bad,” Richie says. Eddie can only see his jean clad legs. He’s so, so tall. “Just smell it.” 

“I can’t tell,” Eddie says, and his voice comes out pathetically small. 

Richie crouches on the floor next to him. “Here.” He takes the milk from Eddie’s unresisting fingers. Eddie leans his head on crossed forearms and turns his head so he’s watching Richie with one eye. Watches the way he unscrews the cap, sniffs it once. He frowns, and goes to drink straight form the carton. Eddie doesn’t stop him, just watches as he takes a careful sip. 

“It’s fine,” he says finally, wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. Eddie won’t let himself look at Richie’s mouth, so he looks at his hand instead. Shiny with milk. 

“Thank you,” Eddie says, and puts the carton away as Richie leaves. He finishes cleaning out the fridge and he scrubs the sink. He does the dishes and he tries to not want to know what Bev told Richie, what Richie told Bev. 

It’s one of Eddie’s lesser qualities. He can never just settle with what he already knows. When he enters a conversation, he has to ask what everyone’s talking about. He can never just wait, and if he just  _ waited,  _ he’d probably figure it out without bothering anyone. Being friends with Richie is maddening, sometimes, because Eddie doesn’t think he could have chosen someone more inscrutable. Not if he tried. 

When Eddie’s hands are raw, he leaves the kitchen and follows the lights in the apartment to the living room. Richie has the front window open. He’s half hanging out of it. A cigarette burns down to nothing in his hand. 

“You’re supposed to inhale,” Eddie says flatly. When Richie turns to him, a massive clump of ash dislodges and hits his shirt in a gray smudge. 

“Ha.” Richie flicks the cigarette butt out into the street. Eddie imagines it falling down, down, down, below. “Yeah.” 

“It’s–“ Eddie clears his throat. “It’s weird that she’s gone already.” He misses everyone like an ache in his chest. Seeing Beverly had just thawed that part of it. 

“Yeah,” Richie repeats. “I guess I’m – it’s a bummer.” He gets up, unfolding his legs, and slides the window shut. “Hey,” he says suddenly, almost halfway bright, “Bev left her nail polish here, and I – “

“Richie, I already said no,” Eddie says, heart in his throat. 

“Just one? Your pinky? I want to practice.”

Eddie wants to say no, but Richie looks so genuine, his eyes pleading. 

So he sighs, crosses the room and sits down on the couch. “Fine,” he says. “But get a paper towel. You’re gonna get nail polish all over the upholstery.”

“And what upholstery it is,” Richie snorts, but he disappears down the hall. Eddie fidgets until he’s back and sitting next to him. The cushions dip, and Eddie stiffens to keep from rolling into him. 

He leans into them, when Richie takes his hand. He tries to be loose when Richie draws it over his lap to rest on the arm of the couch. It takes less than a minute for him to paint Eddies nail, and only that long because he’s so careful. His tongue is poking out again. Eddies tempted to let him keep going, do all ten fingers, because of the way he’s gently cradling Eddie’s hand and rolling his finger this way and that.

“I can do your toenails,” Richie says, abruptly breaking the magic. “No one will see those– unless. Hasn’t Todd given you a standard issue pair of Birkenstocks, yet?”

“That was nice for about two seconds, Rich,” Eddie says flatly. “Thanks for that, I was starting to get confused about your personality.” 

“So you _admit_ it was nice,” Richie says, lifting Eddie’s hand to blow on his nail. Eddie looks at it, the sliver of keratin painted black. Surrounded by the nails on Richie’s hands, already chipping. 

“And no one will ever believe you –  _ ow,  _ Rich,” he startles. Richie’s hand is suddenly a bruising grip around his own. “Okay,  _ okay,  _ it was nice, I won’t be a dick about it.” He looks to Richie with wide eyes, and Richie looks back. He looks like a deer in the headlights. 

“Are you okay?” Eddie asks, worried now. He thinks, not for the first time this evening, that something’s been off with Richie ever since Bev left. Something’s been off with both of them. 

Eddie steels himself for the worst, even if he doesn’t know what the worst is. But does he ever? Skin cancer, maybe? He knew he should have made Richie wear sunscreen every day. Is he seeing someone? There’s no way he could keep that a secret. Maybe something wrong with his parents? Maybe Beverly’s aunt? Beverly? Maybe, maybe, maybe – 

“I’m gay,” Richie blurts, his face red and his mouth in a tight line.

Eddie stares at him. He opens his mouth, “Richie – “ 

“I’m sorry for not telling you,” Richie says. He’s still holding Eddie’s hand. 

There’s blood rushing in Eddie’s ears. What the fuck. His mind is blank for a second. And then another second. “What the fuck,” he says flatly. 

Richie's face shutters shut, blank in an instant. 

“Are you really,” he says haltingly, “Is this really – going to be an issue? For you? Cause I don’t – ”

“You’re gay?” Eddie says, and he thinks he’s going into shock, maybe. He pulls his hand from Richie’s, and the nail polish smears along the side of his finger. 

“Eddie–“ Richie pulls his own hands back, and twists them together. “Is that – is that not okay?” 

“I thought you were dying,” Eddie says, “I thought maybe…” 

“I  _ wanted  _ to tell you,” Richie says. “I tried – “ 

Eddie’s reeling. “What? When?” 

“That night? After…the party...” Richie falters, obviously unsure. 

_ Oh! That party!  _ Eddie’s brain frantically provides.  _ The one where everyone thought you two were sleeping together! That party!  _ “Have you – are you – “ he stumbles over his words. 

“No! No,” Richie says. “Eddie, are you okay?” 

_ Just say it, _ Eddie thinks viciously to himself.  _ Just say it to someone, anyone. Out loud, for once. Just tell him.  _

He can’t, and he doesn’t know why. Now he knows that Richie wouldn’t care. Richie is  _ like him _ , and he still can’t say it.  _ He probably already knows,  _ he thinks to himself.  _ Everyone probably knows.  _

He’s trying to convince himself, and it’s a losing effort. One part of his brain is currently shifting around every memory of Richie growing up, pieces rearranging to make a completely different puzzle. The other part of his brain, the one yelling to  _ Just come out, already!! _ is losing. Badly.  _ What are the odds?  _ He finds himself thinking hysterically. And then he thinks of that day, after Bowers had called Richie a  _ fairy  _ and a  _ faggot  _ at the arcade – they must have been, what? thirteen? fourteen at the time? – and Richie had cried to Eddie and he’d said, furious and through tears  _ Promise me that when you get out go here, you take me with you. I’m afraid I’m gonna get stuck here, so you gotta take me with you, _ and Eddie had held him tight. He never told Richie that he’d always thought the same thing, that he always thought he was the one who was going to be left behind. 

“I uh – I gotta go,” Eddie hears himself saying, and he’s standing before he really has any idea of what he’s doing. 

“Are you serious?” Richie stands with him. “Eddie, it’s not – are you serious? Where are you gonna go?”

_ Clark’s, probably. Some 24 hour diner.  _ “I’ll be back,” Eddie says, “I just gotta –“ He grabs his keys, and his jacket, and as he leaves the apartment his footsteps saying are the same thing Richie is, beating out  _ What are you doing? What are you doing? What are you doing?  _ with every step. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's a doozy, huh. It only took me like 16k words to deliver actual conflict. This is also the longest chapter so far but I wanted to end it at a specific place, and splitting it up didn't make much sense. Anyway, it took a very introspective turn, but I think that's what's so interesting about writing from Eddie's POV - Richie seems like such an enigma in comparison to any of the other characters in It, and it's kind of fun to write anyone trying to figure him out. Does anyone else feel this way? 
> 
> Ok, Chicago stuff  
> -The portrait Richie is looking at is a Van Gogh self portrait that is up on display at the Art Institute. I didn't look up if it was on display in August 1994 because I'm tired and I figured it would be okay, and  
> -I did look up exhibitions that were open then – the exhibition that Bev is drawing in is the Chiseled with a Brush: Italian Sculpture, 1860-1925. There's like no info on it on the Art Institute, which  
> -You should check out their online and poke around; the museum itself is obviously closed right not but they have tons of photos of things in their archive, both on display and in storage. 
> 
> Ok, I think that's it. Let me know what you think, as always! I hope everyone is staying well and healthy right now.


	8. Chapter 8

Once, Richie kissed Eddie.

They were both drunk at the time. At a party. It’s not that Eddie doesn’t like them all together. It’s just that a party with Richie’s work friends is a different animal altogether than the parties Bill would throw on Saturday nights. The Denbroughs must have known that Bill opened their house to half of Derry High at least once a month, but they seemed as desperate to avoid their children as Bill was to get their attention. Round and round like a race car on a closed track under the Christmas tree. Georgie would be away on a camping trip with his sixth grade class, or at a friend’s house, and the word would spread that Bill’s doors would be open at eight. 

There was always something about Derry that kept adults from interjecting where they maybe should have, so when the party spilled onto the lawn and kids were throwing up in the bushes, the neighbors tactfully said nothing to the Denbroughs. Even if they did, which happened on occasion when the music was too loud, Monday morning would just roll around again with icy silence. 

That night, somewhere towards the end junior year, had gone much like any party before or after. By the time graduation was on the horizon, the Losers weren’t at the bottom of the totem pole the way they had been in middle school, but they still weren’t popular by any means. But parties were parties, and Bill had at least earned himself a kind of notoriety. 

Eddie didn’t hate them. He loved the Losers fiercely, and that was enough to make any party worthwhile. But the start of them was always a degree of painful. Watching Bill and Richie fan out through the crowds of teenagers pressed against walls and up the staircase. By the end of the night, the seven of them would all wind up in Bill’s bedroom, passing around a handle of cheap, cherry flavored vodka. Then Bev would do the job of chasing everyone away downstairs, and they’d all collapse into sleep. Puppies in a litter.

But before that would happen, Eddie would stick to Mike. Pass through the hallway with him and Ben and keep people out of Georgie’s room. Keep Bill from doing something stupid. Sometimes he wanted to break things, not because he was angry. Maybe so he could cause permanent damage. Mike’s mouth would twist and he would lead Bill away from the window, or the china cabinet. Eddie would watch it happen and think that there were two sides to Bill; the strong, steady one that he was for them, and the shaky, unstable person that he appeared to see himself as. 

That night had been no different. When Mike was sucked into dealing with Bill, Eddie had looked for a quiet room in the house, beer bottle almost empty in his hand. The rec room was usually pretty empty – maybe the emptiest room in the house, besides the piano room, which Bill always closed off. When Eddie got there, he saw that the Denbrough’s ping pong table had been pulled out, but the little net lay disassembled on the floor in the corner. Richie, one eye screwed shut, was losing at quarters against Beverly. It wasn’t hard to tell. Eddie hadn’t been around to see it, but he knew just going off of how drunk he was – and how  _ not  _ drunk Bev was.

“Eds! Eddie,” Richie said, face lighting up when he noticed him, “Come – come stand next to me.” 

“I’m not playing,” Eddie said, already moving to stand by Richie’s side. “And I’m not drinking out of that. You know how disgusting money is?”

Richie lifted a separate cup from the one sitting in the middle of the table, and waggled it at Eddie. “Shooter cup’s just water,” he said, and then gestured with his cup towards Bev. “She won’t drink dirty quarter-beer either. And you don’t have to play. You’re just my, my good luck charm.” 

“Looks like you need it,” Eddie said flatly, and Bev laughed loudly. “You’re terrible at quarters.” 

“We can’t play beer pong ‘cause he’ll lose too fast,” Bev explained. Then she giggled. 

Richie nodded, grinning huge. Eddie watched the way the corners of his eyes crinkled behind his glasses. The way his nose scrunched up. “See Eds, I can’t lose un _less_ I fall over. _Aaaand_ ,” he said, ducking his head to be next to Eddie’s, “If you’re standing here, you can just prop me up.” Richie’s arm snaked around Eddie’s waist, hand resting on Eddie’s hip to illustrate his point. 

Eddie, three beers in, let it happen. Richie was a tactile person, and Eddie had gotten used to the flirting in fifth grade. Or, he said he was used to it. He  _ should  _ be used to it. He tried not to lean into Richie’s hand, warm and splayed up against his ribs as Bev successfully bounced her quarter into the cup with her own brand of pinpoint accuracy. She always had been the best shot of all of them. Richie didn’t rescind his arm to drink. And then he did, to shoot again. 

Eddie found himself content to stay in the rec room with Bev and Richie. Mike was somewhere with Bill, and last Eddie saw, Stan was going through the books in Bill’s dad’s study with Ben. As they played, something happened in the backyard, and everyone else at the party left to be a part of it. There was something non-performative about the way Bev crowed after a winning streak, or the way Richie fished the quarter out of the water with comical determination as Eddie jeered him on. Lasting and normal, in the way that house parties often weren’t. There was a pleasant and cyclical rhythm to the way they played – shoot, miss, shoot again, hit – and Richie’s hand always returned to Eddie. Usually to rest heavily on his shoulder. Once, he hooked his pinky in Eddie’s belt loop. 

After seven missed shots in a row, Richie sunk into a crouch on the floor. “Had enough?” Bev smirked, perched on the table and taking a sip of her rum and coke. 

“Eddie,” Richie moaned, and Eddie crouched next to him. 

“Bev’s got you beat since you were thirteen,” Eddie said, not bothering to mince words. “Might want to let this one go before we have to pump your stomach.” 

“The coward’s way out,” Richie croaked. His head was dipped forward. The knob of his spine pushed through the fine, wispy waves of hair at the base of his neck. 

“I’ll tell your mother you said that,” Eddie said, “When I’m consoling her at your funeral.” 

“Making the moves on my mom when I’m dead?” Richie lifted his head and smiled. “I approve. You win, Spaghetti. Just one more.” 

Richie stuck his hand out, and Eddie grasped him by the wrist. “Once more, Red,” Richie said as his head popped over the top of the ping-pong table again. “All or nothing. Hey – quick question, totally unrelated – what does vertigo feel like? Is that when the room is spinning? Because when I close my eyes, the room starts spinning.” 

Bev grinned wide. “You’re wasted, Richie,” she said gleefully. “You’re smashed.” 

“Eddie believes in me,” Richie said, flipping the quarter in his hand and miraculously catching it. “Right?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said, pressing a steading hand to Richie’s side, “Yeah, sure.” 

Richie beamed at him, turned back to Bev, and kissed the quarter. Eddie grimaced and Bev raised her eyebrows. “This one is for the underdogs,” Richie bellowed, and then the quarter was arcing through the air like a fish jumping out of water. Winking in the yellow of the overhead light. 

Eddie knew it was going to land in the cup right before it happened. Richie crowed with victory. His hands shot out, and Eddie only had a moment to panic before Richie grabbed his face and kissed him. 

It hadn’t even felt romantic. To this day, Eddie can’t even be sure Richie had aimed for his mouth intentionally. The firm press of his lips were centered at the corner of Eddie’s, and it felt more like a victory kiss. A spur of the moment thing, that had nothing to do with romance or feelings or crushes. 

Bev laughed behind them, and Richie released Eddie and smacked another, sloppier kiss on his forehead. His eyes were shining. Eddie looked into them, wide eyed. Then Richie turned back to Bev, still holding Eddie’s face between his hands. 

“I smoked you bitches!” He cackled. Bev, eyebrows raised and smiling, looked quickly at Eddie, and then Richie, and raised her hands to clap slowly. 

“I only beat you about a million times, Rich,” she’d said, coming around the table to sling an arm around Eddie. “C’mon, let’s go make sure Bill’s alive.” 

The house was mostly empty as the three of them made their way through it in a tangle of arms and stumbling legs. The clock over the oven read that it was almost two. Richie leaned his head on Eddie’s shoulder. “Told you you were my lucky charm,” he murmured against Eddie’s neck, and Eddie said nothing. 

They found the rest of the Losers flat on their backs in the backyard, splayed amongst discarded cups. Bill had a hand thrown over his eyes. Bev jerked her chin at him. “He throw up?”

“Yeah,” Ben said. Bev dropped to the ground behind Bill’s head to gently push his bangs off his forehead. 

Eddie laid down next to Mike, away from Richie, who had settled near Stan. 

“Everything okay?” Mike asked quietly, and Eddie had looked up at the stars, a million of them shining far above Derry’s meager light pollution, and said, “Yeah.” 

In the end, they never talked about it. It was one of those things that even Eddie half forgot about until a few days later. Richie never made any mention of it, so Eddie thought….he thought… 

Now, he doesn’t know what to think. 

“More coffee?” A voice at his elbow says, and Eddie jerks his gaze up from the formica table top to the waitress at his side. He follows her gaze to the mostly untouched diner mug at his elbow, and makes a helpless noise in the back of his throat. A kind of  _ I don’t know, _ but she dutifully pours a splash more into his cup before turning to leave again. 

Eddie knows he’s been kind of a horrible table to have. The only thing he’s ordered has been a muffin and the coffee. He had picked the muffin apart after eating one bite. But when he had stood just inside the doors of the diner and waited to be seated, he thinks she– _ Sandra, _ her name tag says – had seen the look in his eyes and led him to a table by a back window without comment. She’s rude, for sure, in the way that middle aged women at two in the morning tend to be, but Eddie doesn’t mind. 

He thinks,  _ She’s about Mom’s age,  _ and then drops his head into his hands. Sandra, Sonia. She’ll never stop following him, will she?

Diners at night are a strange place to be. Sparsely populated and too brightly lit. This one is off of a busy stop, and people pass back and forth, in and out of the bar down the street. In here though, it’s quiet except for a group of kids around Eddie’s age, slumped together in a booth. There’s a man reading a newspaper, and the sound of the coffee maker behind the counter. But other than that, Eddie could be alone with a pane of glass separating him from the rest of the world. 

_I’m gay,_ Richie had said, and Eddie digs his hands into his hair and inhales sharply. His leg bounces under the table. He never took his jacket off. The coffee sits cold next to him. 

Being gay is…something that other people are. Other people and himself, Eddie thinks painfully. Himself, if he’s feeling brave that day, and he never is. Even his feelings for Richie were something he could carefully dissect and compartmentalize. He’d perform surgery on everything he felt and try to extract it, try and lock it in a box in his head. He could try and separate it from being  _ –  _

Except Richie is like ink in water. Blooming and staining everything he thinks about. Pretty and twisting and clouding the water until Eddie can’t separate him from anything. His feelings have tinged everything within himself, and he doesn’t think he could stop if he wanted to. 

And he does want to. Or – he wants to feel the same way about Richie that Bill does, or Bev, or Stan. Simple and happy. He wants to love Richie without feeling like it’s going to eat him alive, and swallow him whole. Like it’s never going to be enough – like Eddie’s just going to want and want until there’s nothing of Richie left. 

But liking Richie was just a  _ part  _ of Eddie, a part of him that felt different from being attracted to men. Which he is, it’s just easier to ignore. 

_ I’m gay,  _ Richie had said. Eddie’s known him for fifteen years, and that whole time, Richie’s been the same. Eddie can’t even say it out loud, and Richie is the same. He can’t ignore it anymore. 

A part of him always knew. It was easy to pretend it wasn’t what it was, because his mother discouraged physical touch. But even as young as seven or eight, Eddie would sit on the sidelines in gym and watch the boys play soccer. He’d find his eyes tracking them, back and forth across the field that he wasn’t allowed to run on. And then Richie would invariably break away from the pack during water breaks and push his glasses up on his nose and do his best to annoy Eddie for five minutes. Eddie still can picture it clearly – Richie at age eight, his bangs sweaty and stuck to his forehead. His mesh jersey loose over his t-shirt and shorts. God, he was so young. They’ve known each other for so long.

Eddie knew then. He just didn’t know it wasn’t normal. He didn’t know that not everyone felt that way, or what it even meant to feel that way. But then he learned. And then he had learned to ignore it. 

Until Richie kissed him. Then he couldn’t, anymore. He pretended he didn’t love him, but he did, and that was the problem, because he couldn’t make it go away. 

But he had been  _ okay.  _ He had a handle on it. 

But now….

“Kid,” he hears to his left, and when he looks up, it’s Sandra again. Her mouth twists, and he doesn’t know what expression she’s making but he’s nervous. Older women do that to him. Women around his mother’s age.

Eddie clears his throat. “I can buy something…” he starts, but she steam rolls over him. 

“My shift is ending. You want to waste more of my coffee, or are you done here? I’ll need to transfer you to Monique, if you want to stick around.” 

Eddie blearily looks up at her, and then out the window. He doesn’t know what time it is. “No, I…I’m done. I’m sorry.” 

“Look.” Sandra makes that face again. “I know it’s not my place, but. Is there someone you can call? You don’t look too good, and there’s a payphone down the street. Might help.” 

Eddie, already in the middle of pulling out his wallet, pauses. “Not really,” he says finally, and hand her a ten dollar bill. She takes it, gazes down at him for a moment, and then shrugs, turning away. Eddie stares after her. 

“Actually,” he says, surprising himself. “Could I, um. Could I get the change in quarters?” 

“We’re not a bank,” she says, but it’s not unkind, and she nods. 

Outside, Eddie shoves his hands in his pockets and stares at the payphone. He tries to think of who he could call. Ben’s new number is in his address book back home. He has Mike’s memorized, and Stan’s. Maybe they’ll pick up. It’s past one, in Derry. And there’s always his house. His old one.

The day before he left, his mother had told him not to call. That if he was leaving, he was leaving forever. Eddie had tried to tell her that he could come back. When she had said, “To live here?” and he was quiet, she had turned back to the TV. And after that, they hadn’t spoken. She had already begged and cried and pleaded, and this was her final defense. Eddie, so conditioned to her constant worries and concerns and suggestions, hadn’t known what to do. So he’d snuck into the kitchen and called Richie. And then the two of them had left the next morning, while she was sleeping.

He’s almost about to break and call her, just to see if she’ll wake up to answer the phone, when he feels the scrap of paper in his pocket and remembers, suddenly, Bev scrawling the number of her hotel in South Dakota.  _ It’s more of an inn,  _ she’d said,  _ Or a bed and breakfast. I’ll call you guys tonight when I get in. _

Eddie’s hands shake as he punches the numbers in. Through the windows of the diner he can see Sandra and the other waitress on shift cleaning salt and pepper shakers. The college kids have left, and there’s a new old man, reading a New Yorker magazine instead of a newspaper. 

“Hello?” Bev says, picking up after three rings, and sounding more alert than Eddie thought she would be. 

“Bev,” Eddie says, half surprised, “I didn’t know if you would pick up. Are you in South Dakota? I didn’t think you would be awake.”

“I just got in,” Bev says, eight hundred miles away. “Eddie. What the fuck did you do?” 

“I – “ 

“Richie said you ran out the door, practically with no shoes on. I called him, like an hour ago, and he was hyperventilating. Where are you?” 

“A diner,” Eddie says weakly. “I mean, I just left.” 

“Richie’s fucking terrified, Eddie.  _ I  _ was fucking terrified. We thought you were dead in a ditch. Richie wanted to go looking for you but I told him to stay at the apartment.” She sounds angry, and scared, and Eddie remembers this, the way she’d get when they’d do something stupid. 

Eddie can think of nothing to say, except, “Richie’s gay.” 

There’s a long pause. Beverly sounds exhausted when she replies, “I know.” 

Eddie’s throat is dry. “You know.” 

“He told me a while ago. Is  _ that _ why you ran away?” 

“It’s.” Eddie braces his forearm against the side of the pay phone, and leans his forehead against that so he doesn’t have to look at anything. Fuck it. “I think I’m in love with him,” he says. 

It’s the first time he’s said it out loud. He hopes that it maybe got carried away by the wind until Bev says, “Oh. Eddie – “

“I think I am, but I don’t…” Eddie grips the receiver tighter. Until it hurts. Tries not to think about how disgusting it is, cradled against his face. Breathing in a hundred conversations, just like this one. “I don’t want to be,” Eddie says, and his voice cracks. 

“Eddie,” Bev says, gentle. “Eddie, there’s nothing  _ wrong _ with loving Richie. I love him, we all do.” 

Eddie huffs a laugh. “Not like that.”

“I know, but…Eddie, come on. He’s…good, you know? He’s good. There’s nothing wrong with it.”

“I know,” Eddie says, shaky into the receiver, even if he only half believes it. “But that doesn’t mean that it’s  _ right. _ That he…I don’t know what to do, Bev. I don’t know how to go back.” 

“You have to,” Bev says, stern again. “Okay? Tonight. I meant it when I said Richie was freaking out. He was going to fucking  _ run  _ around Chicago, looking for – is that the train in the background? Are you by a train stop?” 

“No, I mean, yes. I’m by some train tracks. Bev,” Eddie says desperately. “I don’t know what to do.” 

“You already asked me, and I already told you. Isn’t that what you want? For someone to tell you what to do?”

“I’m sorry,” Eddie says, voice small. 

Bev sighs,. “No, I – I’m sorry. I shouldn’t – I’m just. I really thought you were hurt.” She takes a deep breath in. “I’m going to say something, okay? So put more time in the phone.” 

Eddie does. When Bev speaks, she sounds exhausted. Like she’s been driving all day. Like she already talked one friend off the ledge. “Eddie, don’t you think you’re freaking out because something could actually happen? 

Eddie lifts his head. “What?” 

Bev continues. “You were just never gonna say anything, right? Because Richie’s straight. Only he’s not, and instead of telling him how you feel, or that you’re – you ran away. Like maybe it could be real, and that scares you.”

Eddie pauses. “That’s not – “

“You know that Richie’s a viable option, right?” 

Eddie swallows. Says, “He – “ 

“Eddie,” Bev says. “Come on. He followed you to Chicago.”

“He didn’t  _ follow  _ me,” Eddie tries weakly. “Chicago’s – it’s a good place for him to be.” 

“He followed you,” Bev says simply. “He could have gone to New York, or LA. Or Boston, or anywhere else. He did it to stay with you.”

“Did he tell you that?” 

“I’m not telling you what Richie says to me, but no.” Bev says. “I’m not making decisions for you or him without telling him. Just – you’re his friend. He deserves better than for you to do this to him. If you wanted to tell him – he really loves you=. Even if it’s not the same, you think he’s going to leave you?” 

“I don’t know,” Eddie says in a small voice. “It’s just –“ his voice breaks. “I’m the one that left.” 

“You can still go back,” Bev says. 

“No, I mean. I left her. My mom. So it’s – “ he pulls the phone away to scrub furiously at his face. 

“You’re not her,” Beverly says, and she says it simply, because she’s so strong. She and Eddie have talked about their parents before, the way that Eddie and Bill never could. What was there to say?  _ My mother smothers me? My parents don’t even live in the same house as me?  _ There was a chasm that separated them in that way, and between stretched the rest of the Losers. Richie’s parents were maybe the most normal, and Eddie sometimes wondered if that was why he was so desperate to be abnormal – or maybe why his abnormality was something he couldn’t ever quite seem to control. 

“You there?” Bev asks. Eddie sniffles. “How many quarters do you have?” 

Eddie looks down. He’s down to his last one. The muffin had been more expensive than he thought. “Just one.” 

“Call Richie,” Bev says. “Tell him you’re coming home. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. But you can’t stay out in the city. You’ll get shanked.” 

Eddie laughs and wipes his nose. “Okay.” 

“Eddie?” 

“Yeah?

“I love you. It’s going to be okay.” And then she hangs up. 

Eddie holds the phone to his chest and breathes through the panic still in his chest. Then, he inserts his last quarter and dials the number to their apartment. 

Richie answers on the first ring. “Eddie?” he says breathlessly, and Eddie’s heart clenches in his chest. Like he’s going to keel over and die, right here on Clark street. 

Eddie says, “I’m sorry,” and he hears Richie’s sigh of relief. 

“Eddie, just – just come back to the apartment, okay? You don’t have to – I’ll stay in my room, you don’t have to, to talk to me – “ 

Eddie’s breath hitches, and he presses the heel of his free hand into his eye, until he sees stars. “Richie, don’t – don’t do that. I’ll see you soon, okay? I’m sorry.” 

“Okay,” Richie says, voice small. “I love you.” 

“Yeah,” Eddie says, and he drops his hand and closes his eyes. “I love you too, Rich.” Then he hangs up the phone, and looks up past the train tracks, to the moon, high in the sky and competing valiantly with the city lights casting an orange glow up into the stratosphere. And then he turns to catch the last train home. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I don’t know when this fic got so Bill centric but I’ve just recently had a come to Jesus moment with him. Took me months to appreciate his character but here we are! 
> 
> Retconned that Bev is stopping in South Dakota for the night because Montana is 1,000 miles away from Chicago (Which is a twenty hour drive what. the fuck.) South Dakota is still a stretch but the alternative is like, Minnesota (sorry, Minnesota) I'm from Texas and I'm still baffled by how big this damn country is. Anyway, it's fixed in the previous chapter(s)!
> 
> Let me know what you think! I know I'm terrible at responding to comments but I see and cherish them all anyway. Also, I'm not sure that the next chapter will be the last (I think this will have be a ten chapter thing but I just have to wait and see until I write it)


	9. Chapter 9

The lights in the train car flicker twice on the way home. Eddie grips the edge of his seat and tries not to think of derailment. Of the train car tumbling off the tracks and into the dog park below. Empty this time of night. The hard plastic of the seat presses lines into his palms. His mother's voice, whispering from the telephone booth he left behind on Clark street, whispers about AIDs and subway poles and strangers and germs. He lets go. 

On the street outside their apartment, Eddie stands and looks up at their living room. Every light is on. They need curtains. Below, the diner is quiet and dark. Chairs stacked on tables, the cash register empty and open on the floor in front of the door. A sort of,  _ Don’t break our windows for nothing.  _

Eddie looks back up to the second floor. He can see the arm of their wingback peeking out above the windowsill. He found it in a Salvation Army a couple of weeks ago. Richie said it reminded him of his grandma, but he let Eddie keep it. Because he’s easy like that, and because he said it reminded him of the armchair that was inexplicably in the Barrens one day, on the side nearest to the dump. Patchy and floral, and they’d played pretend for hours that it was a throne, or the seat of a getaway car. They must have been around ten – Richie and Eddie pressed into it, thigh to thigh. Imagining it to be a race car. Or an x-wing. And then came the day that it was gone. Vanished as completely as it had appeared at the beginning of summer. Nothing to remember it by but the way the grass had been growing around the legs.

As he climbs the stairs to the second floor, Eddie realizes for the first time in years how much he had missed the chair. He had missed sitting in it with Richie, and pretending that they were driving away into the sunset. 

Richie must hear Eddie come up the stairs, because he opens the door to the apartment before Eddie can get his key in the lock. Eddie freezes at the sight of him. Richie flings it open wide before taking two steps back. Then he wraps his arms around his stomach.

Eddie, key in hand, stares at him, and then the floor. He doesn’t say anything for a second. Then he drops his hand to his side and forces out, “I’m sorry for running out like that.” 

When he looks back up, Richie is wide eyed. He’s stripped out of his jeans sometime since Eddie left. Standing there at three in the morning, barefoot in a t-shirt and boxers, he looks smaller than he usually does. And scared. Like he’s holding himself together, with his arms around his middle. 

Eddie looks back down at the floor. “Really,” he offers. “I am. I didn’t…I’m sorry I freaked out. It’s really not…” 

“I thought you weren’t going to come back,” Richie says flatly. “But then I thought, all your stuff is here.” 

Eddie blinks up at him. “I wouldn’t…Richie, I didn’t just come back for my  _ stuff. _ ” 

Richie shifts his weight back and forth on either foot. “Yeah, you haven’t gone rushing for your suitcases yet, so…” 

Neither of them laugh. Richie looks at Eddie like he needs him to. Like he needs Eddie to confirm that it was a joke. He tries to play along. “I only have two, remember? There’s no way they could fit all my things.”

It’s a bad joke, but it’s true. When they moved here, Eddie had so little from his mother’s house. Just his clothes, and the things he couldn’t bear to leave behind. His comic books. His cassette player, out of date but made priceless by his collection of cassettes, the ones his mother hated him having. Mixtapes from the Losers. Stan makes the best ones, but Eddie’s got four or five Richie originals, complete with commentary. When Richie was around fifteen, he had a phase where he wanted to be a disk jockey. He’d rope Eddie into letting himself be interviewed. Eddie hated hearing his voice played back, but he could never bring himself to say no. Afternoons huddled over Richie’s Sony cassette player, which he kept even after he started collecting CDs.

But in a short month, he’s filled an apartment with Richie. Trinkets and thrift store furniture. The mirror they found in the alleyway. A bed frame and new sheets. Too much to just pack up and go. 

Eddie clears his throat. “I’m not leaving.” He corrects himself. “Again.” 

“I called Bev,” Richie says, and Eddie’s about to say  _ I know, _ but Richie’s continuing, “And then I ate a bowl of cereal. And drank a beer. And I would have smoked a joint, but Bev smoked the rest of it the other night.” 

Eddie blinks. “I went to a diner,” he offers. “And ate half a muffin. And annoyed a waitress.” 

Richie nods, too jerkily. He’s going to hurt his neck, one of these days. “Good. That’s good. Are you – do you not want to be friends?” 

Eddie’s still standing in the doorway. The stairs behind him are steep, and if he fell backwards right now, he’d probably break his neck, before bouncing out into the street. The fry cooks would find his body in the morning, crumbled up next to that day’s delivery of bagels. Maybe they’d sweep him aside and he’d float down the street like an empty plastic bag. Maybe he’d wind up in Lake Michigan and wash up on the other side like a message in a bottle. 

He’s not falling, but he feels his stomach drop. “No?” he says, voice too high. He steps inside and closes the door behind him quickly. “Of course I – do  _ you  _ not want to be friends?” 

Richie doesn’t move, even now that they’re one step closer to each other. “No,” he says, jaw working, “I just thought – “ he raises his chin and holds himself higher. “I just thought you might not want to be, anymore.” 

“Jesus, Richie, I – “ Eddie stuffs his hands in his pockets. “Of course I want to be friends.”

All of the air seems to go out of Richie at once. He sinks to the floor in a crouch and presses the heels of his hands to his eyes. “Okay,” he breathes, “Okay.”

“Jesus,” Eddie says again, suddenly afraid and stepping closer. He brushes the tips of his fingers against Richie’s shoulder. As much as he can give, right now. “Are you okay? What’s wrong?”

Richie doesn’t jerk his shoulder away from Eddie. Emboldened, Eddie sinks down next to him. Presses his palm to Richie’s scapula.

“I was really scared.” Richie’s voice is muffled. “Really fucking scared.” 

“Richie–“ Eddie starts, but then Richie is shifting under his touch. Pulling away. Eddie draws his hand back like it’s been burned. 

“Let’s – let’s talk about this in the morning, okay?” Richie is standing, and Eddie is still on the floor. “I don’t think I can. Tonight.” 

Eyes wide, Eddie nods at him, silent and still on the floor. Richie is so tall, standing above him. Eddie’s neck hurts looking up. 

“Don’t – “ Richie stops and clears his throat. “Don’t go anywhere, okay?” Then he turns down the hall without waiting for Eddie’s answer. On the floor, Eddie lets his hands sag to the hardwood. He watches Richie’s door close. Then he gets up and hangs his jacket by the front door. Puts his keys away.

Alone in his room, Eddie stares at his ceiling fan for what feels like hours. The dim glow of the streetlight outside keeps his room from total darkness. In the half light he can see the movie posters Bev had stolen for him when she had her brief stint of working at the Aladdin: Groundhog’s Day, because he’d loved it, and Grumpy Old Men, which he’s never seen. She had laughed when she handed it over, and Eddie had scowled and then rolled it up carefully. In the living room, they have posters for Dazed and Confused, and Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, which Richie has dragged Eddie to four separate times. 

How to say it? How to say,  _ Hey, I’m also gay, and I’ve been in love with you for the past eight years? Maybe more, but I just know that I first noticed when you started saving me the prizes in cereal boxes, because my mom wouldn’t let me keep them?  _

There’s no right answer. Nothing that doesn’t make him sound insane. Nothing that takes the risk out of the situation. He and Richie love each other, maybe – they’ve said as much. They said as much tonight – but that doesn’t mean Richie loves him in the same way. Eddie himself can barely comprehend the love that’s inside of him, can barely quantify it and process it. How could he expect someone to return it?

He dozes until the early summer sun wakes him at six. For an hour, he lays awake, picking at his fingers and trying not to wake Richie up with how loud he’s thinking. When his alarm clock flashes at seven am, he creeps out of his room and down the hall. 

When Eddie quietly pushes Richie’s door open, he’s already awake and sitting up in his bed. He’s listening to his walkman. The early morning light casts stark shadows across his face; his room faces east. The sun bounces off of a string of Richie’s acoustic guitar, propped up against his closet door. It’s so bright in here that the edges of Richie shine. 

“Diner?” Eddie whispers, and Richie pulls his headphones off and nods silently. 

They’re the first ones in. Richie slides into a booth near a window, and rests his head back on the seat. Eddie sits carefully across him and pushes his silverware away from the edge of the table. A young woman in an apron stifles a yawn and sets down two mugs of coffee with their menus. 

Eddie surveys the line of Richie’s Adam’s apple. Then he presses his mouth into a thin line and casts his gaze down at the menu. Richie lifts his head to mess with the sugar packets at their table. His fingers are long, and he makes a mess of the empty packets, shredding them into pieces after he’s fixed his coffee. 

“Sorry for ruining your coming out party,” Eddie says, after the waitress has taken their orders and taken one of the menus. The other one stays behind, in case they want something extra. Eddie fiddles with the peeling plastic. 

Joking with Richie is a gamble, right now, but he huffs a laugh. “We can still have one,” he says, tracing the pattern under the glass table top with his index finger. He glances up at Eddie. “I’ve got four other people to do this with.” 

“So it’s just me and Bev?” Eddie ventures. He feels like he’s walking on very thin ice. One wrong step and the ice’ll crack, but it’ll be Richie who falls through. “Unless your parents…” 

Richie barks a laugh. “Yeah, no. I didn’t…I was kind of hoping I would just get drunk and tell all of you at once. Rip off the bandaid. But it turns out bering gay in Derry is so fucked that it makes you worry that Bill Denbrough is gonna knock your teeth in for liking guys. Even when you’re blind drunk.”

Eddie’s eyebrows knit together. “He wouldn’t.” 

Richie exhales. “Yeah, I know.” He takes a long drink of coffee. “Kind of.” 

_ I get it,  _ Eddie wants to say, but he doesn’t. “I really fucked last night up, huh?” he says instead. 

“Kind of,” Richie says, twisting his mouth into a half smile, half grimace. It stings, even though Eddie knows

it’s true. “Do we have to talk about it?” 

Eddie lifts one shoulder and plays with the edge of his laminated menu. “I guess not. But Bev thinks we should.” 

“Oh, Bev,” Richie says wearily. He sighs gustily and scrubs a hand through his hair. “My instincts say to just avoid you for a week until this blows over, but we can’t exactly do that. I mean, we can, but…” 

“I don’t think you’re going to be straight next week,” Eddie feels the need to point out. Richie laughs, long and loud. 

“Yeah, I guess not.” Richie lifts his head and folds his forearms on the table. “Okay then. How do we try and be functional adults with emotional complexities?” 

Eddie grimaces. “Anyone else would be better at this.” 

“But you’re stuck with me,” Richie says, and then pauses. “I mean, in a platonic – “ 

Eddie’s heart twists. “Yeah, I get it, “ he says, clipped. Like he needs the reminder. He takes a deep breath. “Okay. So – “ He thinks of how to say it best.  _ What is there to say?  _

He wants to run away. He wants to crawl over the table and tangle his hands in the front of Richie’s pajama shirt. He didn’t change out of his sleep clothes – for all intents and purposes, Richie just rolled out of bed. He’s wearing a denim jacket over a Derry High Marching Band tee that he’d jacked from Ben, and his flannel Simpsons pajama bottoms. Eddie wants to rub away the sand from the corners of Richie’s eyes and take a nap with him against the shiny red vinyl of the diner booth. 

He says, “Remember when it looked like my mom wasn’t going to let me leave? And I was freaking out, because we’d already signed the lease on the apartment, and I’d already done my orientation?”

“She barely let you go to graduation,” Richie murmurs, picking at a loose thread on the hem of his t-shirt. He looks up at Eddie. “I was scared, too.” 

“Yeah. But it was…” Eddie looks up at the ceiling. “But you told me that even if I got stuck in Derry for another year, you’d either stick around until I could leave, or help me run away.”

Richie swallows. “I meant it.” 

“I know. Because we did run away. Remember all those stories we’d tell each other, when we were sixteen?” 

Richie’s mouth curls up at the corners. “We were gonna open up a record store.”

Eddie smiles too, slow but there. “Or you were gonna start a band and I was gonna be the manager, remember?” 

“I was always trying to get you to play bass, but you never wanted to be on stage.” Richie leans back and crosses his arms. “But then you’d get to control my schedule and yell at me a whole lot.” 

Eddie laughs. “Yeah, it was perfect. But even though the whole time, I knew it was never gonna happen, it was still nice. I would have still done it. So there’s no way I’m gonna like, move into a dorm over this. You’re still my best friend, okay? I mean,” his voice catches embarrassingly. “We moved here together.” 

Richie’s eyes are shining. “Eddie,” he says, “I would have come out earlier if I knew that you were gonna be this nice about it.” 

Eddie chucks a straw at him. “Don’t let me off the hook so easily! I fucked it all up!” 

Richie bats it away. “Could have been worse!” 

Eddie crosses his arms tightly, so that they mirror each other.“What, did you think I was gonna _hit_ you or something?”

“Dude, I thought you were like, a sleeper homophobe!” Richie gestures wildly with his hands. “You fucking scared me!”

“A sleeper – what the fuck, Richie!”

“I don’t know! You ran out of the apartment like a bat out of hell, I thought your mom’s Catholicism had finally gotten to you!” 

Eddie rolls his eyes. “She’s barely Catholic. I’ve never been to church.” 

“You’d hate it.” Richie picks the wrapper off the end of the straw and blows it back at Eddie. It hits him in the arm and falls to the ground. “Everyone drinks from the same cup of wine.” 

“That’s disgusting. That’s probably why she never let me go.” 

“Except the kids sometimes get grape juice.” 

“That’s okay, then.” Eddie pauses. “I won’t do it again. I don’t know why I..” he trails off. 

Richie shrugs, even though it isn’t okay. “I was really freaked out when I figured it out, too,” he jokes. 

_ If only you knew,  _ Eddie thinks. He holds himself tighter. “I’m staying right here,” he says instead. 

Richie’s jaw works “I’m sorry, too. For…making it weird.” 

Eddie frowns. “Don’t say that. It’s not you.”  _ It’s me. All me.  _

“Are you breaking up with me?” Richie says. It’s a stupid joke that he’s made a thousand times, but this time Eddie doesn’t roll his eyes. 

“Never,” he says, and then Richie is quiet. 

_ I’m going to tell him,  _ Eddie thinks. Not now. Probably not tomorrow. But sometime soon, he’s going to tell him. 

The waitress arrives and sets down waffles in front of Richie, and an omelette in front of Eddie. They wait until she’s gone, and then switch their plates. So that everything’s where it's supposed to be. 

“Are we good?” Eddie has to ask, as Richie’s cutting into his eggs. 

Richie looks up, fork stilled. “Not as good as me and your mom are in bed, but – “ 

He doesn’t manage to dodge the sugar packet that Eddie throws at him. It hits him square in the forehead, and lands on his plate. He gapes it, lying on a piece of toast, and then looks back ups at Eddie, eyes wide and dramatic. “Eddie, come on – I can’t make  _ your dad  _ jokes! You don’t have one! What else am I supposed to do?” 

“You shouldn’t be making either, asshole!” Eddie goes for another packet, but Richie dives forward, cupping his hands around the sugar caddy. 

“I’m taking this,” he says, scooting it back and setting it on the bench next to him. Eddie grumbles and picks up his knife and fork. He’s about to cut into his waffle when Richie clears his throat. 

“Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I think we’re good.” 

Eddie bites back a smile. He can’t help but look up at Richie, who looks quickly back down at his food. “Yeah?” 

“What, you want me to stay mad at you?” He looks a little flustered. 

“Nah,” Eddie says. He smiles, for real. “Just enjoying how quiet you are at seven thirty in the morning. 

Richie flushes. “Fuck off. I am not.” 

It’s seven thirty two. Eddie’s classes start in nine days. A couple has just walked in the door – a man and woman in their thirties. Outside, the dog walkers of Chicago are starting to emerge with their miniature poodles and Pomeranians. Eddie hears someone laugh in the back of the restaurant – maybe a busboy, maybe a line cook. Richie has a smear of powdered sugar on the corner of his mouth from when he stole a bite of Eddie’s waffle, and Eddie isn’t going to tell him around it. 

_ We’ll be okay,  _ Eddie tells the anxiety that’s always one step away from closing up his throat. And this time, he thinks that they actually might be.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope this chapter wasn't too dialogue heavy, but it kind of had to happen this way. Both diners are based on real places (Clark's and Jam n Honey) but neither are really meant to be those places literally in universe. 
> 
> Ace Ventura is definitely something that has aged poorly, but I really enjoyed it as a kid and I think we can all agree that Richie would have been obsessed. It has its ups (physical comedy! jim carrey!) and it's really, really, really, deep downs (transphobia etc)
> 
> Next chapter should be the last one (unless I write it and it's super long, but even in that case I'll probably upload them pretty soon one after another.) It's strange to be at the end, I'll be sad to let this go. Let me know what you think and stay safe everyone!


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this was later than planned, I had some work deadlines that frankly kicked the shit out of me. I would apologize for this chapter being so long but we all know that’s stupid, so enjoy the extra four thousand words. Love y’all <3

When Eddie gets home from his first day of classes, the apartment smells overpoweringly of weed. 

“I told you not to smoke that shit in here, Richie,” Eddie says, scowling at the ground and angrily stepping out of his shoes.

He hasn’t seen Richie since yesterday – he’d had a shift at the restaurant last night. When Eddie left that morning, Richie had been asleep. 

Even after that breakfast at the diner a few days ago – when Eddie had tried to be vulnerable and failed, ultimately, to tell Richie that he’s actually more in love with him than anyone has been in love with anyone, maybe ever – he’s still been finding it hard to resist the instinct to avoid him. To retreat back so the parts of him that he’s exposed have time to heal over. It’d be dangerous, maybe, for Richie to look at them for too long. 

Eddie’d been planning on making a beeline to his room when he got home, but irritation – as always – tends to override the multitudes of his hesitations. 

“Oh, hey, sorry man,” says an unfamiliar voice, and Eddie looks up to see a blonde head of hair tip back to look at him from the couch. For a second Eddie stiffens at the stranger, but then he remembers. It’s their third roommate. Eddie had completely forgotten about him in the past few days. He’d even written it down on the calendar, which –

“Wait, weren’t you supposed to come in tomorrow?” He says, instead of introducing himself or clarifying the policy on marijuana. 

The guy, already leveraging himself off the couch to shake Eddie’s hand, grins. “Flight got rescheduled. I let the other guy– uh, Richie – know.” 

Eddie’s gaze snaps down the hallway to Richie’s room, but the door is closed. He doesn’t hear any noise from the kitchen either, so he turns his attention back to his third roommate. “Eddie,” he says, taking his outstretched hand. 

“Chaz.” 

“Um, cool.” Eddie shoulders out of his backpack. “Have you – is Richie around?” 

Chaz wanders back to the couch. He carefully puts out his joint in a little ceramic ashtray painted like a sun. “He was here this morning. He ran out about an hour ago – said he’d be back by five? He said something about flowers.” He turns to grin at Eddie. 

Eddie grips his backpack strap in his hand a little tighter and feels his ears warm. Flowers? For what?  _ What the fuck is he _ – 

“Are you guys, like a thing?” Chaz asks, sounding genuinely casual. He’s not even looking at Eddie, too buys tucking the joint into the front pocket on his tank top. He glances up to see Eddie stiffen. “Hey man, if you are, it’s cool. I’m from California, so. It’s chill, you know.” 

_ The fuck does that mean?  _ “We have different rooms,” Eddie hears himself say distantly instead. 

It’s not really an answer, but Chaz just shrugs and taps his pocket. “Gonna go smoke this on the back porch – I’m assuming the living room is a no-go. You want in?” 

“No thanks,” Eddie says, already turning to his room so he can panic in peace. He adds as an afterthought, “Richie might want to though, uh, later.” 

“When he gets back.” Chaz, halfway down the hall, turns to lift one corner of his mouth. “Then we can all catch up, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Eddie says. He shuts his door behind him and leans up against it, backpack still in his hands.  _ What the fuck _ ? Is that just how people from California are?  _ Jesus Christ _ . 

He glances at his watch. Four thirty. So he has half an hour to panic about why Richie’s buying flowers. 

It turns out to be about twenty minutes. Eddie’s returning from the kitchen with a bowl of cereal when the front door opens, and Richie comes in carrying what looks like groceries. When he sees Eddie, his eyes dart to the He-Man clock hanging above the hallway. (Richie’s find, from a thrift store. Eddie had let him, because he’d been obsessed as a child.) “Fuck, you weren’t supposed to be home until later!” 

Eddie pushes his nerves down. “Yeah, and our landlord also told me I wouldn’t be able to hear the fry cooks opening the diner at six in the morning.” He takes a bite of cereal. “A lot of people say a lot of things. My last class was released early.” 

He notes, in Richie’s arm, a paper bag of flour. A mixture of relief and disappointment pangs through him. That must be the “flowers.” He gestures at the shopping bags with his spoon. “What’s that?” 

Richie shifts and says, “It’s kind of an early birthday present.” He sounds nervous. “Or, I mean, it’s also a ‘happy-start-of-classes’ present.” He sets down the bags to do jazz hands. 

Eddie shuffles closer. “What’s in – “ he starts to say, through another bite of cereal, but Richie nudges the bags back with his foot. His sock – patterned with Bart Simpson’s face – peeks out above his ratty Converse. He almost falls, but catches himself before Eddie spills any cereal. He’s never had the best balance. 

“Okay, so,” Richie says, hands up, like Eddie’s going to automatically say no, “I was thinking…I bought food – maybe we could eat in the park? And do presents there?” 

“ _ Presents _ ?” Eddie’s eyebrows shoot up. “Like more than one? Richie – “ 

“It’s not more than one,” Richie assures. “Well, kind of. You’ll see. I wanted to wrap it, but…” He gestures at Eddie.

“We don’t have wrapping paper,” Eddie says warily.

“I was gonna use the funnies.” Richie shrugs. “So, picnic? You, me, the grass, hot moms hangin’ out with their kids? Yes? Oui? Si?” He’s nodding emphatically. 

Eddie rolls his eyes. “Yes, yes, okay. Let me finish this. Don’t get too hot and bothered about ‘ _ hot moms _ ’ in the next five minutes, okay?” He turns back to the kitchen, and Richie cackles behind him. 

Alone at the other end of the apartment, Eddie finishes the bowl of cereal standing up at the sink. Around the corner, Chaz is unpacking in his room with the door closed. Eddie can hear Richie shuffling around in the living room. When Eddie’s done, he rinses the bowl and takes a minute to stare out of the window. 

Somewhere out in the alleyway, a crow is calling. Eddie listens close to try and find it. When he can’t, he grips the edge of the sink and dips his head, his chin almost to his chest. 

Richie’s sporadic moments of generosity might be a surprise to some people, but not to Eddie. He’s always known that Richie can be kind, when he wants. When they were younger he’d torment Eddie, sure, but he’d also spend hours catching lady bugs because Eddie thought they were pretty. It was their secret – as much as Sonia drilled it into Eddie’s head that the outside world was a dirty, scary place, Eddie still liked bugs and swimming and climbing trees. Sewer water, no – but before he learned about the existence of microbes and bacteria, nature was fair game. Eddie would bring an old shoebox down to the Barrens, and he and Richie would collect leaves and blades of grass to make what they thought of as a habitat. Then they’d spend hours plucking ladybugs off of wildflowers. They’d dub the shoebox Ladybug City or something like that, and leave it overnight. Richie would always be crestfallen to find it evacuated in the morning. All that time, and they never knew that ladybugs don’t eat grass. 

“Water’s running,” Richie says, poking his head into the kitchen. “You almost ready?” 

“Oh – “ Eddie shuts the tap off. “Yeah. Give me a sec.” 

He’s remembering something he forgot, from years ago – the time a ladybug alighted on his face. He’d almost started to shriek, but then Richie had pressed the side of his index finger to Eddie’s cheek. Carefully, he’d pulled back with the ladybug on his hand. And then it had flown away. 

Eddie washes his hands for good measure. Then he grabs the roll of paper towels from the kitchen and meets Richie by the door. Richie stuffs the paper towels into one of the paper bags as Eddie shoves his feet into his sneakers. Richie hollers a goodbye to Chaz, and then they’re off. 

There’s no need to talk about where they’re going – they just start walking in the direction of the park closest to their apartment. It’s still hot outside. The sky is almost cloudless. Eddie puts his sunglasses on. 

Richie kicks his ankle gently while they walk. “Help me carry this?” He holds out one of the paper bags to Eddie. 

Eddie taps him back. “You’re making me carry my own present?” 

Richie pulls the bag back. “Fine, carry the food. I was  _ trying  _ to be a gentleman because it’s heavier.” 

Eddie snorts and reaches for the paper bag. “No need to martyr yourself, Richie. I’ve seen your noodle arms.” 

Richie swings it so it’s behind his back. “How do you think I carry trays at the restaurant?” 

Eddie presses back a smile. “I’d believe it if I saw it, maybe.” He leans to grab for it, but Richie straightens both of his arms above his head. 

“Nope! You’re the birthday boy! You’re not allowed to exert yourself. That comes for later.” He waggles his eyebrows.

“Oh my god, it’s not my birthday, and it’s going to break.” Eddie grabs the bag from the bottom. “You’re very strong, Richard. Very manly. Can I have the bag?” 

Richie drops his arms slowly. “Fine.  _ Eet’s not heavy, anyvay. _ ” 

Eddie squints. “Are you French?” 

“I’m  _ Arnold. _ ” Richie lines up to kick a rock with the side of his foot like it’s a soccer ball. It skids forward a few feet up the sidewalk. Eddie kicks it another few feet when they catch up to it. 

“Huh,” Eddie says, squinting up at the sky. Richie kicks it back by an unspoken agreement. “Maybe we should rent Terminator. So you can practice.” 

“Terminator 2, and we don’t have a TV.”

“Terminator 2,” Eddie agrees. They’ve reached the road right before the park. Cars stream through the intersection in front of them. Eddie glances at Richie out of the corner of his eye, through the gap that his sunglasses fail to cover. Without the filter, Richie is blinding. Eddie looks back at the cars. A seemingly endless wave, carrying people to and from. Far and away. Into the city, out to the suburbs. He clears his throat. “We don’t have a TV. Yet. Maybe I’ll get us one.” 

“I’m already saving up for one!” Richie immediately protests. “You have to pay for like…books, dude, don’t worry about it.” 

Eddie furrows his eyebrows. “We both pay rent, don’t we?” 

“I still haven’t forgotten about our refrigerator box,” Richie says, and wraps his free arm around himself tightly. “ _ All I want is a room somewhere –  _ “ 

“Yeah, okay, my fair lady.” Eddie nudges Richie gently with his elbow. “I’m not worrying about it. I said I wanted to, so I’m going to.” 

The light turns green. Richie nudges Eddie back. “Can we split it?” 

Eddie shrugs as he strides forward. “Who’s gonna get it in the divorce?” 

“Hey now.” Richie catches up easily. “Who said anything about divorce?” 

“You’re right. It's easy to leave when there’s no paperwork.” 

“Like my name isn’t on the lease! It’s you, me, and Chaz. Hold on – that sounds like a buddy flick.” Richie almost trips over stepping up onto the curb. “ _ Weekend at Eddie’s _ ?” 

“Right,” Eddie says flatly. “So you two can get to know each other. With my corpse.” Richie snickers.

“Corpse Eddie, or Stoner Chaz…” Richie screws up his face as he mimes weighing between the two with his hands. “Tough decision….”

Right. Chaz. Eddie clears his throat. “So, was he everything you imagined?” Richie gives him a funny look. Eddie clarifies. “You know – eight pack? ‘ _ Smoking ho _ t’?” He sounds strained, even to himself. 

Richie laughs and steps over the low chain barrier into the park. “Oh. He uh, kept his shirt on, so I can neither confirm or deny his ‘eight pack.’” He does bunny fingers around  _ eight pack  _ and adds, “And he’s not really my type.” 

Eddie tries to ignore the part of him that is screaming  _ You have a type? What! Is your type!  _ They’re already a step too far into a conversation that easily fits under the “we’re just talking about this now, aren’t we? This is very cool and we are both so, so comfortable” category, and flat out asking Richie what his type is so that Eddie can just get the sick satisfaction that he’s not it is just way too much. 

So he deftly changes the subject. Or maybe it’s clumsy. He’s not sure, he’s just trying to get out of conversations that involve Richie’s attraction to – who? Eddie? He quickly tries to think of anything else. “Guess we’ll have to wait until he brings up Baywatch to ask. Did he bring a surfboard?” 

“Nah,” Richie says. “Well, a little one.” He gestures with his hands, holding them about three inches apart, in a way that cannot be accurate at all. “I hope he’s not actually expecting to go out on the lake. It’s tamer than the wave pool in Bangor. Hey, remember when you freaked out because a stray bandaid touched your leg at the water park?” 

“It was  _ used,  _ Richie!” Eddie chops his hand through the air, horrified by the experience all over again. “Used! There was a little spot of blood on it! I could have – “

“You wouldn’t go on the water for the rest of the day,” Richie says gleefully. “Except – wait, I remember now! You went on the water slide with me. You were the only one who did it, everyone else was too scared.” 

“Only because you bought me ice cream. And it wasn’t a slide, it was a  _ death trap, _ ” Eddie grumbles. But he remembers, too – looping his arms around Richie’s waist, the press of his ribs. Drops of overly chlorinated water clinging to them and dotting their shoulders, the backs of their hands. Everyone complained about the smell, but Eddie kind of liked it. It smelled clean. He remembers, too, the rush as their two person inner tube raced through the covered slide, around in loops. The darkness and Richie screaming the whole way down, and Eddie clinging tighter, tighter. 

“And then after that, you said you’d never do anything like that again, and then you only sunbathed for the rest of the day on the fake beach, and then you got a sunburn on your nose,” Richie finishes, like he’s proud that he’s remembered the whole day. 

“It was mint chocolate chip,” Eddie says, to one up him. “I wanted vanilla.” 

“And now mint chip is your favorite flavor, so you’re welcome.” 

“Ice cream that tastes like toothpaste. The perfect flavor for the two of us,” Eddie says drily. “I was always so jealous that you got to have fun flavors at your house.” 

“Nah. Bubblegum is virtually ineffectual,” Richie says, swinging one of his long legs over the chain strung between posts that marks the edge of the park. “You got all the fun snacks, I got the fun toothpaste. Although honestly, my dad didn’t give as much of a shit about my dental hygiene as he should have. He mostly just made me floss.” 

“And now you don’t,” Eddie says, following Richie onto the grass. “You’ve killed his legacy.” 

“His practice is still open, last I heard, same as your mom’s.” Richie shields his eyes from the sun with his hand as he scouts for a place to sit. He should have worn sunglasses, Eddie thinks, watching the corners of his eyes crinkles. He’s going to be a twenty five year old with laugh lines, and Eddie’s going to love them. 

“Ha,” Eddie huffs, tossing Richie a bone as he picks across the grass to a spot under the tree. A few hundred feet away, a baseball diamond sits empty, save for one couple, close together in the bleachers. 

Richie drops into the grass without ceremony, immediately pulling the contents of the first bag out. Eddie sits next to him, pushing his sunglasses up in his hair. He wishes they had brought a sheet. Or his mother’s quilt. As it is, they’ll have to coexist with the pill bugs for the moment. One crawls through the dirt next to his shoe, and he pokes it gently and watches it curl up into a little ball. As much as the grime of the outside world bothers him, things like dirt and bugs have always felt strangely safe. At least, he’s pretty sure a roly poly can’t get him sick. 

“So I got us – you’ll never guess! – spaghetti bolognese from the restaurant. Ralph gave us extra bread, too. And two beers – don’t ask how. And strawberries from the co-op, because you never let us buy them.” 

“They go bad too fast,” Eddie says defensively, already scanning the plastic container for mold. 

“You didn’t let me finish!” Richie brandishes a water bottle from the bag. “To wash them! So you don’t make me brave the park bathrooms. Though I could leave your mom’s number in there, if you really insist.”

“Why would I insist that?” Eddie says, taking the water bottle from Richie. He flashes him a quick smile. “Thanks, Rich. Early dinner?” 

“Early dinner,” Richie agrees. “Get the bottle caps off these, will you?” He passes Eddie the beers. 

“This is still illegal,” Eddie says, already twisting them off with his shirt.

Richie looks around.“We’ll just have to be sneaky.” He accepts the beer that Eddie passes him and grins at Eddie’s eye roll. “No one’s around, anyway.” 

He’s right. On the other side of the park, kids are screaming on the playground, chasing each other among wood chips. But here, they’re far away enough from everyone else that it’s almost like they’re alone. Tucked into their little corner with the pine trees. 

So they dig in. They drink their beers, and Richie washes the strawberries a few feet away. Eddie inspects them before setting three, one at a time, into Richie’s palm. 

They pass the pasta back and forth. When Eddie’s done, he hands the rest of the bolognese to Richie, who sets about scarfing down the last few bites, and lays back onto the ground. The sparse grass crushes against his back, but he doesn’t care. Just gazes up. The moon is just starting to show – a pale shadow in the sky. The shape of a thump swiping away a drop of water. A crescent smear. 

Richie stays seated next to him. The sun is almost directly behind him. “Scoot to your right,” Eddie says. 

Richie says, “Bossy,” but obliges. Now he looks like an angel in a painting, if angels in paintings wore t-shirts that featured Snoopy in sunglasses, flat on his back on the beach with a piña colada. Rays of sunlight framing his curls like a halo. 

Eddie slides his sunglasses back on and closes his eyes. Richie says, “I like how you always wear those so you don’t get wrinkles.” 

When he opens his eyes, Richie is grinning. “UV rays are very harmful,” Eddie sniffs. The sky is blue blue blue above them. 

Richie snickers. “I’m good pretending it’s not a vanity thing if you are.”

“Sure, if not wanting to die of skin cancer is a vanity thing.” Eddie rips up a handful of grass and throws it at Richie. “Isn’t it so fucking stupid that I thought I was allergic to this until I was like, fourteen?” 

Richie bats it away. “I don’t know how you didn’t know. You rolled around in the grass with me like every day! Especially when Bowers was pushing us around. You know what’s weird, though?”

“Pretty sure I was more worried about getting shoved around by a psychopath than I was about there not being bumps on my legs,” Eddie scoffs. “What?” 

“Grass makes me itchy,” Richie whispers, leaning in conspiratorially. “Just like your mom’s crabs. I think  _ I’m _ allergic.” 

Eddie laughs. Sits up to shoulder out of his jacket and spreads it on the ground next to him. Pats it twice. “There you go. Lay down all you want. Get melanoma and wrinkles.” 

The look Richie gives him is almost inscrutable. Just warmth, and something else, pulled away and hidden behind his eyes. “In a minute,” he says, fidgeting with the handle of Eddie’s present. “Do you want to open this now?” 

Eddie takes his sunglasses off and takes the bag from him. “This means I get another one on my actual birthday, right?” 

Richie reclines onto one elbow, his hand resting on Eddie’s jacket. “I was gonna give you a different kind of present, if you know what I mean,” he says, and winks. Eddie can tell that he’s nervous. 

“We’ll see about that,” Eddie mutters, hand dipping into the bag. Pushing aside the tissue paper – really, where had Richie had gotten it? – he pulls out a stack of records. They’re unwrapped, three of them in total, but they each have their own paper sleeves, obscuring what they are. Richie sits up. 

“I thought you thought records were obsolete,” is the first thing Eddie thinks to say, and then cringes. He gets the feeling he should tread carefully, when Richie seems this nervous. But really – Richie has records and a record player, but only stuff that his dad kept around that he liked. He’s always preferred the best and newest things, ever since they were kids. Shiny boom boxes and CD cases clacking in the glove box of his car. 

“CDs scratch easily,” Richie says, scratching the back of his head. “I wanted to give you something that would, um, last. I picked them up at Championship, and, uh – yeah. Open them in order?”

Eddie presses his lips together and pulls the first record out of the paper. He’s faced with Cyndi Lauper in a red dress –  _ She’s So Unusual.  _

Eddie laughs. “Oh my god,” he says, flipping it over to read the track list. He had it on cassette until it wore out. He’s got it memorized but he looks anyway. 

“Oh – oops,” Richie says, leaning forward to peel off the price tag from the back. He leans back and rolls it into a ball in-between his fingers. “Remember how obsessed you were with this whole album? You and Bill had a choreographed dance to – “ 

“ _ She Bop,”  _ Eddie remembers, horrified, and curls his legs up and rests his head on his knees, the record pressed to his chest. “Oh my god, I forgot about that.” 

“I did not.” Richie hops up and mimes the choreography that Eddie and Bill had devised one summer afternoon: hip, hip, lift the leg, kick, turn around – 

“I’ll pay you to stop,” Eddie begs. “How do you even remember that?” 

“It’s seared in my brain,” Richie says, even as he fumbles a complicated move that includes jazz hands. “Every time I blink, there it is. There it is. There it is.” 

“I would give anything for you to never have seen that.” 

“You’re the ones that showed it to me! Bill was so proud!” He’s still going, but clearly has moved onto a freestyle section in time with the Cyndi in his head. 

“He’s the one who spearheaded the project,” Eddie groans. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten that your sister dressed you up as Material Girl for Halloween when we were nine, by the way.” 

Richie instantly shifts into a pantomime of sensually stroking his neck (laden with diamonds, of course). “My mom hates Madonna, I can’t believe she let her do that. If she’s ever mad that I’m – blame Meredith.” 

Eddie, holding in giggles since the mortification eased, breaks. Richie drops in front of him as he laughs breathlessly and grins. “Do the next one!” 

Snorting, Eddie sets  _ She’s So Unusual  _ carefully on the grass between them and pulls the second album out of its sheath. Then he pauses. “I didn’t know you like Mazzy Star,” he says, eyes flicking up to Richie. It’s alternative rock, so the genre isn’t surprising, but he’s never heard Richie listen to it. It only strikes him as odd now. “Thought it was too psychedelic for you.” 

“I’m plenty psychedelic!”

Eddie screws up his face. “Dream pop?” 

“I listen to pop! We were  _ just  _ talking about Madonna,” Richie protests, like they’re the same things at all. He shrugs. “But I uh, usually listen to it on my Walkman. You know, headphones.” 

Eddie flips it over. There it is – track five.  _ Blue Light _ . How is he not supposed to think of Richie when he hears that song? 

They’ve both been quiet for a minute, so Eddie clears his throat. “I’ve never listened to this all the way through,” he admits. “I thought this was gonna be a Weezer album.” 

“Ha! I’m gonna blast it when we get back to the apartment. You and Chaz can slow dance.” Richie taps the top track –  _ Fade Into You.  _ “Tell me they don’t love that shit at Green’s.”

Eddie snorts. “It’s the only thing they’ll tolerate that came out after 1985. I think Mazzy Star is mellow and drugged up enough that Todd can almost convince himself that it came out in ’79” 

“Come on, I know Todd had glam rock days,” Richie says, miming shredding a guitar. “I’ll bet he was putting on glitter and going to all the shows.” 

“Pretty sure he was at the summer of love, actually,” Eddie says. He slides the record out of it’s sleeve to trace the ridges with his finger. “And Woodstock. But he was so high for eight years I doubt he remembers.” 

Richie shakes his head. “Next time I see him, I’m gonna ask if he has a fringe vest he wants to give me. Or you. Maybe we can match.”

Eddie almost says something about not wanting to look like a member of the Village People, but manages to think before he speaks. He swallows guiltily and says, “Last one?”

Richie, who’d flopped onto his stomach sometime while waxing poetic about glitter, sits up. The nervous energy is back, and he curls his legs up to his chest and folds his arms around them. It’s rare to see him so contained.

Eddie understands when he pulls out  _ Blue  _ by Joni Mitchell. “Speaking of the summer of love,” Richie says, and then clamps his mouth shut. 

Eddie blinks down at the album, and then up at Richie, because this is the last record he would expect to get from him. Richie likes rock, primarily, and alternative. Some punk. Not singer songwriters from the early seventies. 

Richie must sense his confusion, because he starts talking. “I heard it on when I was at Green’s, one time, y’know, and it seemed like you liked it.” 

Eddie furrows his eyebrows. “Have you listened to it?” 

Richie pauses, and then nods. “I went to a record store and listened to it. And then I bought a cassette. Back in July.” 

Eddie continues to stare at the record in his hands. He’s got a soft spot for the Rolling Stones and Velvet Underground, all gentle and seventies and washing over him. But he never told Richie that. He never included it on any of the mixtapes they’d traded back and forth. In a way it felt embarrassing in a way that, for some reason,  _ Girls Just Wanna Have Fun  _ or  _ It’s Raining Men!  _ didn’t. Maybe because it was old, the kind of music Bev’s hippy aunt listened to. Or maybe because it made him ache, and he didn’t want anyone else to see that. 

But Riche knew, anyway. Because he knows Eddie, even when Eddie doesn’t want him to. 

“Do you like it?” Richie asks, voice still nervous. 

“Yeah,” Eddie says quickly, his fingers folding around the vinyl protectively. “Yeah, I really do. Thank you, Rich. I’m only gonna be able to play these on your record player,” Eddie smiles down at the records, lying in the grass, a collage of music, and then looks up at Richie. “I’ll have to–“ he starts. Then he stops, because –

The look on Richie’s face is the look Eddie imagines himself to have, most of the time, when he’s looking at Richie and no one’s watching. Warm and stricken, at the same time. 

Eddie had been about to say that he’d have to get a new one when they inevitably move away from each other. It’s what he had been alluding to earlier, with the TV. What happens when they don’t live together, anymore? 

Eddie looks down at the gifts in his hands. Is this what he’s going to have left when Richie is gone? When he decides that he can’t take it anymore, do the healthy thing and move away and try not to pine for people who don’t want him? Three records and some secondhand furniture? 

But – 

_ Who said anything about divorce? _ Richie’s voice rings in his ears, and Eddie looks at him. Really looks. And then he rests his hand in the grass and leans across the space between them and kisses Richie, like he’s wanted to for years. 

Richie stiffens, and Eddie almost pulls away, already terrified that he’s made a mistake. But then Richie presses back and cradles Eddie’s face in his hands. Gentle, so gentle. Eddie’s hand finds its way to the sleeve of Richie’s button down, where he clings. It’s brief – they’re in public – but Eddie just wants to close his eyes and melt into him. So he does. 

It’s Richie who pulls away first. Eddie lets go of his shirt. His fingers ache from how tight he had twisted the fabric. 

“Um,” Richie says, eyes wide. “You don’t – you don’t have to, just because I’m – “ 

Eddie tries to be brave. “I’m gay.” 

“You’re – “ Richie makes a funny expression, like he’s been hit in the chest. 

“Did you know?” Eddie asks, pulling his knees back up to his chest. 

“I....I hoped you might be,” Richie says hesitantly, and Eddie’s heart flutters. “I didn’t know for sure, though. And then you—well, then I thought, for sure, that you weren’t.” He pauses, and laughs, but it’s short and forced. “So, what? We’re both gay, that’s it?”

“What?” 

“That’s why you kissed me?” Richie won’t look at him. 

Eddie stares at him. “You think I just go around kissing people because they’re gay?” 

“I don’t know,” Richie says in a small voice. “You don’t – I don’t know who you’re kissing.” 

“Richie,” Eddie says, “You’re not serious, right now.”

“Well, if you’re – I don’t exactly have objectivity here!” Richie presses his thumb harshly to his bottom lip, and Eddie’s eyes drop to it immediately. 

“You’re so – “ Eddie casts his gaze up at the cloudless sky. He thinks of Bev on the phone and Richie on the beach and _he followed you here, Eddie,_ and _I love you_ at the payphone. And way back in July, _Thanks for moving here with me._

He doesn’t look at Richie when he says, “Richie, I’ve been – I really, really, like you. I’m  _ in love  _ with you. So no – I’m not just kissing you because you’re gay, and I’m gay, and you gave me a Cyndi Lauper vinyl.” 

Richie doesn’t say anything, and Eddie thinks that he’s going to sit there, looking at the sky like an idiot forever, until he hears Richie stand. He looks to see Richie running off in the other direction. Eddie’s stomach drops for a second until he realizes that Richie’s running in a giant circle. He whoops, long and loud. Birds, pecking in the grass, scatter as he runs back to Eddie, out of breath. 

“I take it that’s – a good thing?” Eddie ventures, and then Richie grins brighter than Eddie’s ever seen him, and takes his face between his hands again to press kisses against Eddie’s face – his cheeks, above his eyebrows, his nose – before finding his mouth again. They’re both smiling into it. 

When they pull back again, Eddie reaches out to touch the crinkles by Richie’s eyes. “I’m sorry I took so long,” he says. “I was – I have a lot of issues.” 

Richie laughs, and Eddie hits his arm. Not too hard, though. “We live in America in the 90s, dude, I think you’re allowed to have them.” 

“I didn’t want it to be true,” Eddie admits, even as Richie’s running his thumb over Eddie’s knuckles. “I didn’t – I didn’t want them to be right.” He chances a look up to Richie’s face. “Did you ever feel that way?” 

Richie’s mouth presses into a thin line. “Yeah.” 

Eddie grimaces. “Dumb question.”

Richie shrugs,  _ yeah.  _ Holds Eddie’s hand a little tighter. “But. It’s you.” He says it simply. “It’s you; how could it be wrong?” 

Eddie’s eyes sting and he grips Richie’s hand tighter. “Um, yeah,” he hears himself saying, throat thick. “Me too. For you.” 

Richie laughs again, and even though he might be laughing  _ at  _ Eddie, Eddie still feels something in him brighten and start to float for the first time. “Super eloquent, dude. What happened to you telling me you loved me?” 

Eddie’s face flames red. “Shut up. I’m not used to…” 

“Me either,” Richie says. When he smiles, soft and small, it’s shy of his usual grin, but no less brilliant for it. “I guess I’m just more of a romantic.”

Eddie opens his mouth to say something stupid, but then he casts his gaze around to their picnic and the records – each in their own way a declaration of Richie’s feelings. Their childhoods; the end of high school. This summer. “Yeah, maybe you are,” Eddie says. “You’ve got me beat. I think this is – don’t laugh – I think this is the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for my not-birthday.” 

Richie laughs and says, “What, was I supposed to wait another two weeks?” But he hooks his pinky around Eddie’s all the same, and Eddie gets that sometimes, there aren’t words. 

On the way back to their apartment, the records tucked safely back in the paper bag, and the leftovers thrown away in a park trashcan, Richie bumps the back of his hand against Eddie’s. “So what now?” 

Eddie glances over at him, and shyly presses his hand back against Richie’s. Not quite holding it, but something. “What do you mean?”

Richie looks around, and curls his hand around Eddie’s. He grins crookedly. “Are you gonna keep me forever?” 

He’s joking, but Eddie stiffens and ducks his head. He wishes he could just be normal, but – 

“I don’t want to be that way,” Eddie says, staring at his shoes. “Asking you to stay. It’s not – it doesn’t work, anyway. You’d leave, if you wanted to.”  _ I did. I left her.  _

“Ask me to stay,” Richie says immediately, stepping closer. “I want you to keep me.” 

Eddie thinks of his mother, begging on the couch with his hand clasped between hers. Soft, because she put lotion on four times a day. He can smell it, if he even thinks about it. And then he’d left her behind. 

But Richie’s hand is rough around his, isn’t it? The nail polish on his fingernails is chipped, and his hands are calloused from working the occasional shift washing dishes. There’s a burn, just on the inside of his wrist. He’d been trying to light a cigarette on the stove last week, and gotten distracted. 

Eddie touches the burn with the tip of his index finger. He looks up to meet Richie’s gaze. He’s serious – his eyes are intent behind his glasses.

So Eddie says, “I want you to stay.”

And when Richie leans in close to press his cheek against Eddie, he lets him, even though someone could see him. Richie’s curls brush against his temple, and Eddie lets his eyes fall shut, just for a second. 

“Come on,” Richie says, when he pulls away. “Let’s stop at Radio Shack. I’m tired of not having a TV and I’d rather just cough up the extra money than dig around Goodwill for weeks. It won’t be so bad if we split it.” 

“You have a job for two months and think you’re hot shit, huh,” Eddie muses, but he doesn’t disagree. 

“I think you’re forgetting my stint at Bargain Video.” Richie’s hand slips back down to his wrist. “Remember? Sophomore year?” 

“How could I forget? You hid a porno in a Back to the Future case and rented it to me!” 

Richie laughs. “Oh my god, I forgot about that. That was so funny.” 

“Fuck off, I wanted to watch Back to the Future! You’re so lucky my mom didn’t see!” Eddie says, but he nudges Richie’s wrist back with his own. 

“There’s no way you watched that with her, she would have freaked the fuck out. But I commend your taste. I mean, the  _ mom  _ in that movie – “ 

“And we’re done talking about it. Done!”

Richie bites back a grin. “So, Radio Shack? And theeeeen, we can go home and have sex on the couch.” 

Eddie jerks his hand back and looks around for any stray children. Or homophobes. “Richie!” he hisses. “We cannot have sex on the couch! For one thing, I’ve seen you eat food off of there – and for another, Chaz is probably on it right now, counting the cracks in the ceiling, stoned out of his mind – “ 

“Ah, Chaz,” Richie muses, reaching for Eddie’s wrist again. Eddie gives him his hand without much resistance. “He’s gonna cock block us so much.” 

“Not if we stay in our rooms,” Eddie grits out, stomach swooping. Dear god.

Richie waves his hand dismissively. “Good thing he’s from – “ 

“ _ California,  _ oh my god, did he give you the whole ‘don’t worry, I’m not a homophobe, I’m a surfer’ thing?”

“Yes!” Richie laughs. “What the fuck! I didn’t realize I gave off  _ that  _ much of a vibe!” 

“Well, I’m clearly not a good judge of character,” Eddie mutters, squeezing Richie’s hand and then letting it go as they reach the intersection. Richie presses the back of his hand against Eddie’s and smiles over at him. 

A thought comes to Eddie, suddenly. “Do you remember kissing me? In high school?”

By the way Richie gapes at him, even as the crosswalk turns green, the answer is probably no. Eddie pulls him across the intersection as he splutters. 

“I – what? That’s bullshit! I would remember!” 

“You were really drunk,” Eddie says smugly. The kiss used to torment him, but now it’s just funny. “I was never sure if you forgot or just didn’t want to talk about it.” 

Safely across the intersection, Richie places both hands on Eddie’s shoulders. “Wait, wait. You’re telling me I  _ kissed you  _ and you didn’t say anything about it for – ?” 

Eddie thinks. “A year? Ish?” 

“A year!” Richie throws his hands up in the air. 

“We were playing quarters against Bev! You were so drunk I turned you on your side that night so you didn’t drown in your own vomit!” 

“I can’t believe you. We’re watching Spinal Tap when we get home,” Richie says decidedly. 

Eddie groans. “We are  _ not  _ watching This is Spinal Tap. I cannot hear you talk about how it  _ goes to eleven  _ in that  _ horrible  _ accent. I can’t.” 

“You can, and you will,” Richie says, starting off in the direction of the nearest Radio Shack. “We could have been boning this whole time. We could have been having sex on the beach. We could have been having  _ summer lovin’. _ ” 

“Fine,” Eddie agrees, but mostly because it looks like Richie is going to break out into Grease choreography. “But for the record I am never having sex.” He waits for Richie to turn around, and grins. “On the beach.” 

“Oh thank god,” Richie breathes, and drapes himself over Eddie’s shoulder. “I mean – not that it would have been the end of the world. But there’s only so many times I can jerk it to – “ 

“Beep beep,” Eddie says, but for once, he doesn’t push Richie off. 

Jacket tied around his waist, he leans into Richie for as long as he dares. And then they’re off. It’s a cloudless day, and Eddie’s determined to enjoy the last few weeks of summer for as long as he can. Soon September will come and bring fall along with it. And then October with midterms, and changing leaves. But for now – his gifts clutched in one hand and Richie a heavy weight along his side – Eddie feels the last part of him settle into place. Ever since he saw the Chicago skyline, way off in the distance as the moving van ate up the flat miles of I-90, he’s felt that, like a puzzle tossed into the air, the pieces of himself were coming down to slot together. By some incredible chance of fate, they managed to land right side up. 

Eddie knows that he’s not ready yet to call himself a full and complete person – healthy and happy all the time, and one hundred percent okay with himself – but for the first time, he feels like he’s got a picture of himself as a whole. Not a piece to fixate on, or a corner ignored. Just the image completed. 

He’s not going to get skin cancer by letting himself into the light. He knows that now. So as Richie chatters away next to him about Christopher Guest, Eddie turns his face to the sun. 

And he’s okay. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading and enjoying, even though my characterizations leaned maybe a little too sincere at times. Maybe the lack of clown-trauma helped them calm down a bit. 
> 
> Part of the reason this chapter took extra time to get out was that the only album I had planned out for Richie to give Eddie was She’s So Unusual. I’ve had the whole album as a birthday present scene half written for months but I never got around to actually picking out the other two. Anyway, I spent a lot of time relistening and listening to albums to try and pick the right ones for the other two. Definitely listen to A Case of You and Blue Light. But I listened to tooooonnns of music because for some reason there was a gap in my music knowledge from 1990-1994 besides the obvious stuff (and I ended up going with So Tonight That I May See anyway.) 
> 
> Anyway, the short of it is that I did a lot of research for this fic that didn’t really make it in. But I hope everyone enjoyed! Hope this fic was soothing (until it wasn’t lol) because those were the original vibes. Thank you for sticking with it and leaving such wonderful comments. 
> 
> Lastly, the title is from the Soccer Mommy song of the same name, go give it a listen!


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